SILVIJA GROSA JŪGENDSTILA PERIODA PLASTISKAIS UN ...

V.2. The orientation toward Medieval imagery
Several buildings that were designed and decorated in 1903 were ones
which involved quasi-Medieval imagery – generalised interpretations of the
appearance of castles, for instance, without any specific historical models. A
typical example of this is the residential and commercial building at Jauniela Street
25/29, which was designed by Wilhelm Bockslaff and the August Volz workshop.
Owned by the builder Ludvigs Neiburgs, the building has plastic décor which does
not create many associations with specific historical styles. On the façade of the
building designed by Konstantīns Pēkšēns in 1903 for the attorney Juris Lazdiņš at
Antonijas Street 6, the décor presents the Medieval subject as a world of fairy tales
and legends. As was the case in the Neiburgs building, the goal was to create
unspecific and generalised ideas about the Middle Ages as a romantic period in the
past. Nearly analogue décor iconography, albeit with a different solution, can be
found at Blaumaņa Street 28 – a residential building owned by M. Liepiņš,
designed by Karl Felsko, and decorated by the Volz workshop. The residential
building at Meža Street 4A in the Pārdaugava neighbourhood of Rīga offers a very
direct interpretation of a Medieval castle. Designed by Konstantīns Pēkšēns and
built between 1901 and 1903, this is a building done in the Tudor Gothic style.
Here the images of the plastic décor are amusing and sincere because of their
craftsmanlike appearance and their element of rusticalness.
The search for different decorative solutions can be seen in the residential
building which Konstantīns Pēkšēns designed for himself with the help of Eižens
Laube in 1903. The building is at Alberta Street 12, and its expressive silhouette
with little towers and pediments is generally reminiscent of the image of a
romantic castle. There are also Nordic motifs in the décor, however, and this
corresponds to the ideas of pantheism.
V.3. The diversity of motifs and variations in their synthesis
Attempts to produce both traditionally presentable motifs and motifs
which were in line with the era on a single façade were not always particularly
successful. An example is the building at Brīvības Street 68, which is a residential
and commercial building built for J. Sawitzky (1903, architect Alexander
Schmäling). Here we see a conflict between modern architectonic solutions on the
one hand and the décor on the other, because the décor represents an eclectic
mixture of a variety of elements. The desire to strike a balance between decorated
and empty areas of façade through the arrangement of plastic décor has not been
successful here.
A more homogeneous artistic expression can be found on the façade of
another building which was built for Sawitzky – the one at Elizabetes Street 23
(1903, architect Hermann Hilbig). A textual sentence on the façade awards a
certain specificity in the décor, which is otherwise symbolic and generalised. This
is a traditional technique which was found in the décor of buildings in Rīga and the
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