Dagobert Peche Biography - Infos for Sellers and Buyers

Dagobert Peche

St. Michael 1887 - Mödling 1923

Dagobert Peche studied in Vienna between 1908 and 1911. Starting with mechanical engineering at the Technical Institute, he switched to the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, where he studied architecture. On completing his studies, Dagobert Peche designed carpets as well as china. Although his formal language at first revealed Baroque and Rococo influences, Dagobert Peche was soon keenly interested in standardizing forms and the new possibilities afforded by industrial mass production of crafts objects. In 1914 he showed work at the Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in Cologne. Dagobert Peche joined the Wiener Werkstätte in 1915. The Wiener Werkstätte had been founded in 1903 by Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, and the banker Fritz Wärndorfer. Moser had left the Wiener Werkstätte by 1907 and there was another upheaval in 1914, when Wärndorfer emigrated to the US. The Wiener Werkstätte found new financial backing from Otto Primavesi but by then it was no longer featuring such exclusive products. In 1916 Dagobert Peche became a director of the Winer Werkstätte. As one of its most creative exponents, Peched designed some three thousand objects, including china, furniture, book bindings, jewelry, fashions, textiles, and even Christmas tree decorations. Until his death in 1923, Dagobert Peche continued to exert a strong pull on the designs produced by the Wiener Werkstätte. His work is typical of the rounded, more eclectic style predominating at the Wiener Werkstääte from 1915, which was directly opposed to the stringent geometry and clarity exemplified by the work of Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser.