Cigarette and Match Holder with Ashtray

Wolfgang Hoffmann|Pola Hoffmann|Early American Pewter Company, Boston, MA

ca. 1930 · Pewter · Modern and Contemporary Art

Wolfgang Hoffmann met his wife Pola when she was studying in Vienna under Joseph Hoffmann, Wolfgang's father and the co-founder of the Wiener Werkstätte. The couple immigrated to New York in 1925 and worked as a team until their divorce in the early 1930s. This cigarette and match holder with ashtray typifies the work of early modernists, who favored geometric patterning over ornamentation to provide interest. The juxtaposition of the two rectangles and the hemisphere, itself inset with pie-shaped forms, creates a tension that elevates the utilitarian object into an art form.

Artist

Wolfgang Hoffmann|Pola Hoffmann|Early American Pewter Company, Boston, MA

Date

ca. 1930

Medium

Pewter

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

John C. Waddell Collection, Gift of John C. Waddell, 2000