Irene Schaschl

Irene Schaschl was born in Yugoslavia in 1895.  She studied at the famous Viennese applied art school (Kunstgewerbeschule) from 1912 to 1916 and a year later joined the Wiener Werkstätte, where she designed a series of ceramics and glassware.  In 1918 the magazine Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration published her set of ceramic figures called ‘The Four Elements’.  She left the Wiener Werkstätte in 1921.  Reni Schaschl died in Vienna in 1979.

The thirteen years during whcih the Wiener Werkstätte had a ceramics workshop, are unique in the history of applied arts and remain, even today, completely unrivalled.   The Wiener Werkstätte, which for almost three decades had represented --both nationally and internationally -- the very essence of modern and avant - garde Viennese taste had sadly closed its doors in 1932.  The ongoing financial problems, the First World War, the stock market crash and  the Depression in the 1920s all prevented the further development of a stable economic base for the Wiener Werkstätte to exist and flourish.