Die pflantz, Anton Seder, Vienna 1890.

SEDER (Antoine) & GERLACH (Martin). Plants in their applications to art and

industry. Vienna, Gerlach and Schenk, nd (c. 1890).

Original lithograph 

Board 50

Sheet size 53 x 38 cm

A few minor flaws in the margins.

Very rare and beautiful prints of plant and animal motifs applied to ornamentation,

decoration and furnishing by the Bavarian painter Anton Seder (1850-1916) director of

Strasbourg School of Decorative Arts between 1892 and 1915.

"Anton Seder (1850-1916), Bavarian decorative painter, was born in Munich, then a real

art capital of Germany and trained at the city's Royal Academy. He benefits from a

complete classical education, – class of antiquities, architecture, trips to Italy,

Greece, which he completed with an apprenticeship in industrial design.

In the 1880s, he became a decorative art drawing teacher and began a career

in this domain.

Asked in 1889 to be the director of the School of Decorative Arts of a Strasbourg attached to

Germany at the end of the war of 1870, Anton Seder accepted the post and established a

unprecedented pedagogy, giving a large place to craftsmanship with specialized manual workshops,

and emphasizing the observation of nature: he organizes many visits to the museum

of natural history to study stuffed animals, and incorporates a botanical greenhouse into the

school building itself.

The study of nature is at the center of training, because for Seder "only he who has been trained on

the basis of nature study is able to adapt to changes in orientation

artistic and changing tastes of his time."

At the turn of the century, Anton Seder became one of the outstanding figures of Art Nouveau: he

consecrates the artistic renewal of the city thanks to its pedagogical principles, but

also gained notoriety through its own productions. As an artist, he creates

many works in collaboration with craftsmen (goldsmiths, ironworkers, ceramists), but

it was essentially as a draftsman and teacher that he acquired wide renown.

Before his arrival in Strasbourg, Seder had already made himself known by the publication of works

Ornamentation: Allegories and Emblems (1882); Plants in their applications to art and

to industry (1887). He continued until 1903 to publish several works devoted to the motifs

ornamental, splendid sets of decorative boards that are part of the tradition

old from the templates directory. These portfolios explore typical themes of Art

new: nature, the animal kingdom, models for goldsmithery, ironwork, painting

decorative."

Die pflantz, Anton Seder, Vienna 1890.

Availablity: in stock