Herter Brothers

Herter Brothers was a 1864 to 1906 in New York City existing company to manufacture high quality furniture and interiors for private homes and public institutions. Owners were the German -born half-brothers Gustave ( Gustav ) and Christian Herter from Stuttgart.

History

The older brother Gustave came in the time of the Revolution of 1848 in the United States and began to work in the furniture industry in his original profession as a wood carver. In 1853 he exhibited in an exhibition at the New York Crystal Palace a dresser made ​​of oak, which made ​​him known to a wider public for the first time and formed the basis for his own company. A few years later he was already employing hundreds of workers.

The developments at the beginning of the second half of the 19th century in the United States came to meet him: the tendency to create their own home libraries and galleries, led to new needs of furniture buyers. One of the earliest known works Gustave Herter met these requirements: an exhibition or presentation table for valuable books and works of art, which was richly decorated with carvings. The nouveau riche of Victorian America became the main target group Herter. 1864 joined Gustave and Christian Herter, who had also come to 1860 in the U.S. to the company Herter Brothers together.

Customers and works

In 1860 Gustave Herter equipped the home of Hotel Baron Ruggles S. Morse. Other customers of the emerging company were John Pierpont Morgan, LeGrand Lockwood, banks and railway tycoon who was completely furnish several rooms of his country house in Norwalk by Herter Brothers, Mary Frances Sherwood Hopkins Searles and Milton Latham. This investor and politician Thurlow Lodge to lay down in Menlo Park, California. In the music room of this building was probably the largest piece of furniture that was ever produced on the American continent - a console made ​​by Herter Brothers. It is a testament to the style from which propagated mainly Christian Herter: material wealth and a combination of numerous art movements such as carving, painting etc. led to effects that reminded more of painting than in furniture making. The general appreciation of arts and crafts as well as exotic materials and art forms in the 1870s and 1880s corresponded precisely this tendency.

Christian Herter also took over as one of the first designers in America traits of Japanese art, even before this became a general fashion by the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. One of the first customers who ordered furnishing of this new style at Herter, the insurance magnate James Goodwin was in Hartford (Connecticut). His eclectic cottage Woodlands of 1874 was fitted in anglojapanischem style. In 1940, the house was demolished; only a small part of the former facilities remained Atheneum in Hartford 's Wadsworth.

One of the most impressive testimonies of the work of Herter Brothers was the residence of William Henry Vanderbilt, which was realized in 1879 on Fifth Avenue and 55th Street in New York. Except for the colors of the façade, the company had a free hand in this building.

1870 Gustave Herter different from from working life to return to Germany. Christian Herter retired in 1883 from the company and died in the same year. Although the company had to give up its monopoly position in the coming years, but continued to be very successful. Apparently, the Herter Brothers had hit the taste of the time. In a report on the company in 1995, we read: " [ ... ] the sheer audacity of building bigger and bolder forms in wood - and every other material under the sun - make Herter Brothers the premier innovators in furniture design, in at age did Took its furniture very seriously. "

Exhibitions

Works of the Herter Brothers were shown in a 1995 exhibition of the Community Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.