{"id":14500,"date":"2022-07-19T03:57:20","date_gmt":"2022-07-19T03:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/ja\/?post_type=product&p=14500"},"modified":"2022-07-19T03:57:20","modified_gmt":"2022-07-19T03:57:20","slug":"gerda-koepff-pioneering-collector-of-art-nouveau-glass","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/ja\/gerda-koepff-pioneering-collector-of-art-nouveau-glass\/","title":{"rendered":"Gerda Koepff, pioneering collector of Art Nouveau glass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Art Nouveau season guest post from one of the world’s leading collections of glass, D\u00fcsseldorf\u2019s\u00a0Glasmuseum Hentrich<\/a>. Dr. Dedo von Kerssenbrock-Krosigk introduces us to the innovative collector Gerda Koepff (1919\u20132006), whose bequest of Art Nouveau glass is an important part of the museum\u2019s collection today.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Art Nouveau plays a particularly strong role within the collections of the Glasmuseum Hentrich, which forms part of the Museum Kunstpalast in D\u00fcsseldorf.<\/p>\n

The museum owes this speciality to the donation and bequest of two private collections of outstanding quality: the Helmut Hentrich collection (after which the museum itself is named) and the Gerda Koepff collection.<\/p>\n

French art glass of the Art Nouveau period is a fascinating topic for collectors.\u00a0From the late 1870s, an important change took place in the Paris sale rooms of Fran\u00e7ois Eug\u00e8ne Rousseau (1827\u20131890), in the glass factories of Emile Gall\u00e9 (1846\u20131904) and the Daum brothers in Nancy, and in many glass workshops throughout Lorraine and the Ile de France.<\/p>\n

Until then, glass had been used for practical objects, even if at times highly luxurious ones; now, it came to be seen as a splendid medium for artistic expression. While retaining some of its utilitarian function in the shape of vases, bowls and dishes, Art Nouveau glassware gradually became an art form in its own right.<\/p>\n

Gerda Koepff, n\u00e9e Stoess (1919\u20132006), was born into a family of industrialists in Eberbach, near Heidelberg in south-western Germany. Her elder brother Harald Stoess was killed in action in World War II and she took his place in the family company.<\/p>\n

She became the company\u2019s executive director from 1960 until 1975, and continued to oversee the firm successfully until her 80th birthday. It seems that Gerda Koepff\u2019s interest in art glass art of the Art Nouveau period was not a family inheritance. Her parents\u2019 generation had grown up during the heyday of Art Nouveau and had witnessed its decline into mass-produced and unimaginative objects.<\/p>\n

In the 1960s, when Koepff began acquiring Art Nouveau glassware, progressive German households were typically furnished with modernist objects and decoration. Gerda Koepff thus started to build her collection against the zeitgeist.<\/p>\n

Koepff\u00a0developed an eye for quality decades before collecting Art Nouveau became popular \u2013 and expensive. Initially, she merely intended to decorate the living room of her new home. Soon, however, her interest became deeper and more refined as she began to perceive the differences in quality and execution. Koepff\u2019s discernment is particularly apparent in her interest in Daum glass.<\/p>\n

As early as 1968, she found the prevailing contempt for this company\u2019s products entirely unjustified, and she proved her point by purchasing several Daum masterpieces, which form a major part of her collection today.<\/p>\n

The Koepff collection reflects the collector\u2019s personal taste and eye. It does not have a rigid structure or principle, and while the focus is on French Art Nouveau, Gerda Koepff never aimed for completeness in an academic sense.<\/p>\n

It contains a range of artists and manufacturers, but above all, it is a personal selection of individual pieces. The vases, plates and bowls in her collection tell us about poetry, symbolism, a love of nature and the continuous expansion of the limits of glass. \u201cAt some point,\u201d she said in an interview, \u201cI had the feeling of having reached the end; the collection had a look. And that was where I wanted to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learn more about the collection of the\u00a0Glasmuseum Hentrich<\/a>\u00a0and why not check out our\u00a0Art Nouveau exhibition<\/a>\u00a0too?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"