Designer: Carl Auböck III (1924 – 1993)

Item: Bookends Model 5403

Manufactured by: Werkstätte Carl Auböck

Country of origin: Austria

Year made: 1968

Materials: Nickel Plated Cast Iron

Dimensions: 4” x 4”  x 4”

Condition: Very good

References: Auböck, Carl IV, die kataloge der werkstätte carl auböck (1925 - 2016) – 1975, Carl Auböck Archive (2005); Auböck, Carl IV, die arbeiten der Werkstätte carl auböck – fotografiert von 1948 – 2005, Carl Auböck Archive (2009); Wright Auction Catalog; The Workshop: Carl Auböck Designs 1930-1980 (2016).

Description: Here is an important Auböck III design from a collection of nickel plated iron objects designed and produced from 1968 to the mid 1970s. This design according to the Archives dates to 1968.  This series of objects, which includes six different bookends, ashtrays, coasters, a chess set has a more severe brutalist design aesthetic. In 1957 while Auböck was spending time in the United States studying architecture at MIT, the architect Paul Rudolph was just starting to design many important public commissions in the brutalist style in the United States in New England.  In 1958 Rudolph became the chair of the architecture department at Yale and designed its museum.  This design is very well documented in the archive books and catalogs and despite its apparent popularity these are hard to find.  They are unmarked as most of the objects in this series were issued.