Jacob & Josef Kohn
Jacob & Josef Kohn, or shortly J. & J. Kohn called, was a furniture and interior decorating company in Austria - Hungary. The expanded name of the firm Kohn was first Austrian stock corporation for the production of furniture made of bent wood. Vienna or corporation for the generation of Viennese furniture. Novo Radomsk.
History
In 1849, Jewish businessman Jacob Kohn founded ( 1791-1866 ) along with his son Josef ( 1814-1884 ) in Vsetín, Moravia, a factory producing wooden components. 1867 Kohn was a privilege to improve the method for bending of long timber. Just one year later, in 1868, took the built in Vsetín factory for the production of bentwood on their production. The following year a second production facility was in Jičín, Bohemia, erected. Other factories followed in 1871 in Krakow and Teschen, 1884 in the Russian Novo- Radomsk, and a frame factory in Holešov in 1890. In 1900, the company employed 6300 workers who started a daily output of 5500 pieces of furniture.
Jacob & Josef Kohn was appointed purveyor Spanish ( Proveedor de la Real Casa ).
1893 there were 51 production of bentwood world. Kohn met the increasing competition with technical innovations, such as the development of new furniture details and production processes, and the steady expansion of its product range. Not only coffee shops, and residential areas were furnished with bentwood. After establishing his frame factory it was Kohn possible to provide complete room amenities.
Josef Kohn -oriented Although the better -to-do clients taste, but had a long time no qualified designer for salon furniture. At the Paris World Fair in 1900, Kohn was able to present models of Gustav Siegel ( 1880-1970 ), an artistic staff of the Wiener Werkstätte and Josef Hoffmann's students, were designed for the first time. Gustav Siegel was then chief designer of the company Kohn and was responsible for most of the designs. From then on, bentwood chairs were no longer anonymous industrial products for the mass market, but became a part of the Arts and Crafts Movement and product design. 1901 was given to Jacob & Josef Kohn the honor to perform the design of the honor hall of the Austrian exhibition in Glasgow.
After the death of the founder Josef Kohn on 17 September 1884, the business was continued by his widow Rosa and their sons Carl, Julius, Felix and John Kohn. The oldest of four brothers, Carl, retired in 1895, returned to private life.
Own sales houses were in Antwerp, Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, Hamburg, Cologne, London, Madrid, Marseille, Milan, Moscow, Naples, Nuremberg, Paris, Rome, St. Petersburg and Warsaw and other representations and agencies at all wichtigereren Handelsemporien. The products of the house were already awarded with medals and honorary diplomas first 36 almost all exhibitions before 1900. The owners were given at the Paris Exhibition of 1878 the highest recognition from the emperor, and awarded by Commander, Officer and Knight's Crosses of Austrian, Spanish, Belgian, German and Russian orders.
The furniture factory in Teschen was honored by Crown Prince Rudolf, Archduke Albrecht, Rainer Friedrich and through visits and also by the Emperor Franz Joseph I.
Notable charities in the factories also gave a proof of the dedicated to the workers welfare. It output a disability and pension fund, creches, savings and advance institutions, drawing and Modelierschulen, regular general Christmas Bescherungen, etc.
Besides Josef Hoffmann designed architects such as Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Koloman Moser and Otto Prutscher, products of the company Kohn, which led to a great success in the Cologne Werkbund exhibition in 1914.
The collaboration with Josef Hoffmann promoted the reputation and success of the firm Kohn. So Hoffmann supplied designs such as the " sitting machine " from the year 1904 and chairs for the Viennese Cabaret Fledermaus in 1907. Sanatorium Purkersdorf paid Hoffmann dining chairs of layer beech with circular ornaments which he had to perform when Jacob & Josef Kohn. In return, Hoffmann and Koloman Moser in 1906 designed a sales point of Kohn in Berlin, Leipziger Straße 40 For the Art Exhibition in Vienna in 1908, he designed on behalf of Kohn a small country house with an indoor facility. Otto Wagner had the chairs for the telegraph office of the newspaper " Die Zeit" in Kohn finished.
With the help of furniture fabrics of Backhausencompany, the artists created seating, which possessed an extraordinary for its time value. Jacob & Josef Kohn was name was to become a leading company in the field of furniture production and co-founded the Wiener Werkstätte, a discipline which years later as " industrial design ".
The success and the importance of firm Kohn was also underlined by the participation in a variety of exhibitions both at home and abroad and conferred awards: Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876; Paris World Exposition 1878 ( award ); 1885 Antwerp; Exposició Universal de Barcelona ( 1888); 1896 Nizhny Novgorod; Paris World Exposition 1900 ( award ); 1901 Glasgow; 1901/ 02 Austrian Museum for Art and Industry; 1902 Turin; Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904; 1906 Milan, London, Bucharest; 1908 art show in Vienna; 1910 Buenos Aires ( honors) and 1914, the Cologne Werkbund exhibition. The exhibitions from 1876 showed the will to bent wood in architectural form.
1914 merged J. & J. Kohn with the Mundus AG ( Kohn- Mundus), which was incorporated again in 1922 in the company Gebrüder Thonet ( Thonet Kohn- Mundus). The Kohn brand remained until 1937 consist. Furniture by Jacob & Josef Kohn can be found today in museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Musée d' Orsay in Paris. The Museum of Applied Arts, MAK Vienna has a large collection of furniture and presents permanent exhibition provides an overview over a hundred years of history to the competitor or goods of Gebrüder Thonet Kohn brothers and the furniture factory Danhauser.
The motto of the company Jacob & Josef Kohn was " Semper sursum ", " Always up". The company's headquarters was in Vienna Inner City, Elizabeth street 24, the " main defeat ", ie the central sales area, was also in the inner city, the castle ring 3