Fine Glass November Beaker by Michael Powolny for Lobmeyr

As both a designer and a teacher, the Austrian ceramicist and glassware designer Michael Powolny was an important figure in the development of modernist aesthetics in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. His romantic sculptural pottery figures embrace the lush, dynamic stylings of Gustav Klimt and other progressive artists, while his functional pieces — such as glass bowls and vases — employ the simple linear and geometric ornamentation that marked the work of Josef Hoffmann and other members of the Wiener Werkstätte community of designers and craftsmen.

Powolny received classical training in ceramics from his father, a potter, and at the Vienna School of Applied Arts, but later joined in the modernizing movement in the Austrian arts at the close of the 19th century. In 1897, Klimt, Hoffman, Koloman Moser and other artists and architects founded the Vienna Secession, a group that fought for freedom of expression against the city’s tradition-bound arts establishment. Powolny’s work reflects the changing times. He used classical figures in his ceramics — female nudes, cherubs — yet would dress them in modern ornament such as garlands of abstract, geometric flowers. Pieces from Powolny’s ceramics company were sold through the Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese Workshops) founded by Hoffmann and Moser, and Hoffman later hired Powolny to create ceramic ornamentation for his architectural masterpiece, the Palais Stoclet in Brussels.

Powolny would go on to design glassware that combines elegant, tapering forms with precise linear decoration. His most influential work may have come as a professor at the School of Applied Arts, where he taught both Lucie Rie, the great Austrian-British modernist ceramicist, and the American potter Viktor Schreckengost, creator of the “Jazz Bowl,” an icon of the Streamline Moderne design. As you will see from the items on offer, Michael Powolny’s works have a double appeal: in their sprightly, endearing forms and as artifacts that document a period of signal change in the history of modern arts and crafts.

The venerable Austrian firm J. L. Lobmeyr is one of the world’s premier glassware makers and purveyors, noted especially for its lighting and tableware designs. Headquartered in Vienna, Lobmeyr has won numerous illustrious commissions in its nearly two centuries in business, including the chandeliers for the Hapsburg monarchy’s Schönbrunn Palace, Lincoln Center — which is home to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City — and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Lobmeyr is still family owned and managed. The company was founded by glass trader Josef Lobmeyr in 1823. It thrived during the long tenure of his son Ludwig, who built a network of manufacturers and artisanal workshops in Bohemia — central Europe’s revered glass-making region, now part of the Czech Republic — and earned imperial patronage. (He also collaborated with Thomas Edison to create the first electric chandelier, in 1883.) His nephew, Stefan Rath, who took over as head of Lobmeyr in 1917, introduced modernist design to the company repertoire, contracting with designers such as Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos, Otto Prutscher and Michael Powolny to create tableware.

Lobmeyr has never been married to a dominant in-house design type. The firm has produced chandeliers and sconces in styles as various as neo-Baroque, Rococo, neoclassical (or Louis XVI), Art Nouveau, minimalist and “sputnik” mid-century modern. As you will see from the offerings available on these pages, Lobmeyr can bring a sense of grandeur suitable to any décor.

Find vintage J. L. Lobmeyr lighting and other furnishings on 1stDibs.