I wonder what kind of mind it takes to be able to envision and then execute the designs for a palace and then just as easily envision and execute the designs for a champagne coupe. I've been looking at two pictures of work by the Austrian designer Joseph Hoffman on and off for the last few hours. One is of his most famous building, the Stoclet Palace in Brussels, an austere yet otherworldly structure with cream-hued Norwegian marble walls that have, over the years, been tinged the pale green of oxidized bronze. He crafted the designs for it in 1905, with construction being completed in 1911. A year after that, he designed his equally famous glassware collection, the “Series B,” crafted in frosted crystal and black enamel. Imagine a boxy champagne coupe with geometric lines cutting horizontally and vertically around the glass and its stem. If somebody served me champagne in this glass, I would probably just stare at it all night, and not talk to anyone.
But maybe this is just how a designer's mind works (or at least how a designer supports herself), moving between architecture and industrial design with ease. After all, design is literally all around us, all the time. Maybe the distinction I'm making between a palace and a champagne coupe is actually all in my head. Maybe it’s actually not such a big distinction at all, at least not to the mind of someone like Hoffman. The more I look at the champagne coupe, the more I see the palace; the more I look at the palace, the more I see the champagne coupe.
-Eugenie Dalland