The Modern Interior

original artworks by Gustav Klimt, that it was almost impossible to distinguish
between the container and the contained. Hoffmann acted as the
choreographer of the whole ensemble, commissioning many of his colleagues
to create items for it as well as designing many of them himself,
including the silverware, porcelain and glassware. In the sitting area in
the house depicted, the texture of the marble used for the walls almost
merges with the pattern on the fabric used to upholster the chairs. The
vases of flowers and the statue on a plinth serve to complete the artistry
of that rich interior.
In addition to working on many residential projects for clients, like
his contemporaries Hoffmann also designed for the commercial sphere.
In 1900 he created a striking rectilinear interior for a barber’s shop in
Vienna, demonstrating that men could also be pampered in fashionable
spaces and become part of modish display. In 1903, with Koloman Moser,
the same architect-decorator designed a dramatic, rectilinear reception
space, complete with a table, high-backed chairs and flowers, for the salon
of the Flöge sisters. In the same year the two of them also created an inter -
ior for the Wiener Werkstätte’s showroom in Neustiftgasse in Vienna.
While the impetus for the New Interior undoubtedly began in the
domestic context, its public arena manifestations were not afterthoughts
but conceived, rather, as continuous spaces in the same modern world.
Mirroring to a significant extent the exodus of middle-class women from
the home into the commercial sphere in that period, the New Interior
was ‘at home’ in the commercial and cultural spaces of the metropolis,
especially in those locations in which women could increasingly be found
entertaining themselves and shopping. Linked to fashionable taste and
emphasizing the commodity, the New Interior undoubtedly posed less of
a threat in those temporary spaces as it could be experienced by itinerant
women, in their capacity as flâneuses in the city, as fleeting encounters. Its
fashionableness and desirability were heightened by its presence in public
spaces and it encouraged women to become consumers of its small
component parts – ceramics, glass objects, jewellery, even small pieces of
furniture – which could easily be added to existing domestic spaces
without transforming them beyond recognition.
A few hotels embraced the fashionable interior styles of their day,
among them the Hotel Metropole in Brussels (1904), the interior of which
was created by Alban Chambon; the Palace Hotel also in Brussels (1904);
the Palace in Lucerne (1906); and the Hotel and Pension Eden au Lac
in Zurich (1909). 12 Other hotels, among them the Grand in Melbourne, 49