carl auböck:
in this summer we worked on the "complete catalogues of the werkstaette carl auboeck 1925- 1975". it was launched as a werkstaette and "carl auboeck archive" co- production and was an instant success with historians , collectors and friends of carl auboeck design. although it is in german language it also sells in  the u.s. and japan , we are looking forward to an english version  or additional  text for newcomers. it is a book with drawings , hand drawings by my grandfather and this chronological compilation is full of creative spirit , its authentic quality is something long forgotten in the history of design .
next thing we are working on , i promised it to many people,  is a second book with all the fotos available in the carl auboeck archive . this will be very important to show the different approach the camera had in showing new forms in the 1950ties. together with the first book it will show how products were meant to look for the customers.
with all experiences with my own work , i love the idea of backwarded analyses in the meanwhile. they show us how far the idea reached over sketch to product together with fotos , publications to the reception by the customers.
to prepare all this i constantly work in our own archive which is in fact a small museum of  a lot of casting forms , tools, and  prototypes of the last 80 years , and of course a great number of series - products. all the items are photographed, measured, weighed and  described and so on in the end there will be a complete catalogue of all the content of the archive. i think that this will take 2005 but i can assure you that there not many things i prefer to do - it is like taking a trip in a time machine travelling through a microcosmos of ideas and quality.
at the same time we run our architecture studio doing jobs  for example for the viennese building authorities as well as for the technical university of vienna.
i also frequently work on exhibitions or museum concepts. all these different segments of our work fit together quite fine , sometimes time gets a little short , to give lectures about  light (museum of fine arts /vienna 2003) and abandoned shops in vienna (in preparation for 2005), one about austrian design between the wars and the special influence of british standards on it (in preparation for 2005).
together with a group of other architects we work on a book on my father carl auboeck 1924-1993, who succeeded my grandfather in the workshop and was a very renowned architect and designer , too.
design work is done constantly as our workshop is producing new products as
well is carrying on with carl auboeck "classics". right now we will start reediting lamps, vases and chandeliers... for example the swinging vases collection was designed this spring , especially for a garden show the werkstaette contributed in.

2. designandfun:

carl auböck:

i think that the easiest answer to your question in the straightforward design attitude with a lot of humour in it plus high end craftsmanship. this attitude never tries to create fringes or ornamental beautifications but has high artistic self esteem. the interest in our products never has stopped ,right now there seems to be a trend in rediscovering things that have this "no-shit" modernist attitude. the table was produced in high numbers till the early 1960ties, i remember sitting under a high, toweing heep of 30 tables , the whole house was crammed with them , to be shipped to the states. they were products of "the moment "- wooden parts the would otherwise be burned or thrown away- grandfather took it to the workshop and created this fabulous piece out of it. it was an act of recycling , like every act of creating art is. it never was the attitude of creating luxury for the home ( this terrible house and garden deco syndrome) the ideas were simple and straightforward, and worked forward into the future. Perhaps this is what the connoisseur sees in such a piece , too.

3. designandfun:

carl auböck:

the 2060 was developed together by grandfather and father- the werkstaette made the dummies for forging tools (1955-1956) it came on the market in 1956, prize 1957, grandfather died this year. amboss-neuzeughammer was a perfect client , they had great group of designers, some of them quite unknown..but they lacked international marketing power. so ithink they had to close down , when they had collection of the finest cutlery available. rosenthal made a buyout in the 1970 ties, no one heard anything of the flatwares again. why it looked like that ? well I think they were quite good designers and the manufacturing was perfect. at that time my father was around the world with projects , met gropius as a friend at his home, had befriended the eames´ses , wachsmann, neutral, calder and moore.
the avant-garde style was the little on the raw side style of this flatware , its weighty presence of it – it is a statement- people either love or hate it.
salesmen hid it until the shopowners went through their sampledrawers themselves.
half a year ago our japanese customers showed us a japanese made looalike of the 2060 – quality and weigh quite ok , perhaps we´ll have the opportunity to reedit the 2060 again – the world would be ready for it now, after 47 years?

4. designandfun:

carl auböck:

itten was very important to help ca00-57 to leave vienna for some time (his father: "with your ideas you´ll gonna starve….), itten taught the vorkurs in weimar. alma was the wife of the director , gropius. itten provided a small scholarship since carl auboecks father , as you can see above didin´t have any humor for all that. 
after the long stories my grandmother told me , a large number of talented young students didn´t have any money, were literally starving, so were they .
so they took jobs , odd jobs to get along. and flunked a few of the impotant lectures – so they had to show up in the hotel ,where alma and gropius had to stay while their "master-palace"was finished. they had to wait in the conversation room- one of them without shoes- a roundish room with a table in middle , the table was heaped with cellophaned bonbons, confiserie – now you dare touch this! you insects ! who do you think you are ? students?nobodys ! my husband has not a minute for creatures like you.. alma had her great appearance, red dyed hair , short fat little fingers laquered red sticking out a worn chinese imitate silk morning robe at 3 in the afternoon, lolling her accusations under strong alcoholic influence. the walls were hung with large format kokoschkas , alma travelled with them.

5. designandfun:

carl auböck:

sure is that itten had a great idea about the "new mankind" , there were many reformers popping up after the first worldwar.and sure is that he was one of the ones that were offering spiritual concepts important after the loss of national and economic identity, a typical leader in difficult times.
i am sure that he was very important for my grandfather although one does not feel the immediate impact on his work , when you study the first catalogues of the 20ties. the concept of self- knowledge was very important for both grandparents- him tending for his own ideas –her living after "mazdaznan" all her life.they read a lot to each other like nietzsche , goethe., kierkegaard, taoteking, i ching,.. played a lot of music on various instruments;
my grandfather tending to be more anarchic and liked coffee and cigarettes (numerous ashtrays!)
grandmother was a sculptor(wackerle/munich) later became a textile artist and produced a number of fabrics for the werkstaette (magazine holder), they are very scarce and reach very high prices on the collectors market

6.designandfun:

the mazdanan teachings believe that mankind will go through a refinement, bodies will change in the future as well as mind and thinking, a spiritualization. Itten called auböck as his most talented student. Although his influence cannot be seen immediately, can there possibly be one in his sculptures with basically heads and slim bodies?

carl auböck:

(laughs) i swear – i wasn´t there when they had their mazdaznan hours.. but i believe strongly that my grandfather followed itten in the first attemps of his work but soon found out that life itself is more magic than any theory- you should not forget that in the 1920 ties the world was full of leaders political and spiritual ones who used the great postwar vacuum to influence people in all imaginable ways (rudolf steiner , gurdieff, even hitler..) i believe that grandfather was already on his way , started his own thing, but in the 20ties he was 20 yours old – a boy- one could say , but when itten- the master- said ,you are his most talented achievement under his students it must have been of great importance to him. the form of humans in painting and sculpture is part of his visionary complex , i dont believe it is a program.

7. designandfun:

carl auböck:

í worked with him for about 18 years and cherish the time of it like the remembrance of a long climb in the mountain regions.
he was also visionary and very well organized , he managed to do many things at the same time and expected the same capability of his coworkers.
first this hits you quite hard , but when you see that this high standard is also the one he himself works and thinks in all ways of life , nothing is left but admiration . he thought of life itself as a big never ending project ,in contrast to his father he loved to travel and to teach , even abroad. staying in foreign countries he befriended collegues all over the world, had log term working contacts. concerning design policy he had that werkstaette background, always in a creative mood he was never to understand the exploitaitve attitude of the postmodern times of the late 20^th century – he was a lot production orientated – he believed that good design and good products heal the world. he was a believer in endurable quality – i think he never believed in marketing strategies- he was more fond of a process of making people fall in everlasting love with products- and i know he succeeded there.

8. designandfun:

carl auböck:

he received most prizes in the 1950-1960ties for flatwares, packaging , optical devices, ski binding.. he was one of the first "industrial designers " in austria at that time. it was before we worked together.
when i started to work in his office there was a lot of design work to do , especially for tableware and kitchenobjects.the prizes were substituted with work . he was very busy , very concentrated, and highly sensible and talented.
when i worked on a new series of wine glasses i made drawings for one day and a half – there was no idea that was new to me , so i showed him the whole batch of drawings , all a little dull.
after i showed him the lot , he took his pencil and ,like many times before and after , with a few quick lines he sketched something , that was so unbelievably easy and graceful , at the same time visionary.
all his work had this wide horizon of knowíng a lot about the world- i also believe that his students on the university of applied arts in vienna found this capability amazing and admirable.

9. designandfun:

do you know about the relationship between your grandfather and father?

carl auböck:

well , my mother often told the story that my grandfathers wife very often was telling her daughter in law . don´t go into the workshop they are quarrelling again.then my mother knew that something new was about to be born there , something again sensational.
they worked a lot together , laughed a lot , went to the movies, especially they loved the broadway melody series, my grandfather and father had a great lust for life , for the arts, loved intelligent conversations, my mother admired them very much for their brotherlike relationship.
my grand mother was very well read , spoke a number of languages , knew a lot about philosophy and the arts , but i think the workshop life was too tough on her, she was a strict vegetarian, no smoking , no alcohol , no vices at all. but she had the guru- charisma: she worked in the werkstaette-showroom and was selling the products often together with good advices for the health of the customers and / or vegetarien recipes for them.

10. designandfun:

carl auböck:

my mother always told me that "they"- mother, father and son called them selves the "holy trinity" some task for my mother to get hold of my father at the age of 15. then they were together 52 years. for sure the wives had great in fluence on their carl auboecks- it was a different one in every generation. understanding development of the other is a little too optimistic. i think they were very truth- and trustful with each other and built up a world of their own, within selfdesigned walls . i dont believe i could have worked out in another way.
i remember my grandmother always talking at lenghts about the "self"- at my moments of great pubertary problems she come along with very simple solutions, very alike the sketches of my father – i was stunned and at the same time relieved – again it was her great horizon and knowledge of the world within that brought solutions.

11. designandfun:

as a kid i dont really remember , only a few thigs : for example , he designed a bottle for a great and famous winery on the side of the river danube in the city of krems – he studied all the forms that were under the spell of patented forms ,thought a little , and then said- this wine is so straightforward – i want to have the bottle also straightenend out. so he made all the lines straight , this was around 1960, the bottle is still sold in large numbers.but the story i want to tell to illustrate our relationship goes like this: when my father had this bottle in production he once took me with him to the factory one summer. it was very hot and he took his lancia flaminia.we arrived there in the heat of the day.
when i peeped in the glass factory door were it even was hotter then outside and wathed my father laughing out loudly about something together with the red blobs of glass falling into their pressing forms moving on slowly but steadily to gain their greenish colour while cooling off i think i thought to myself - what a cool profession, what a cool guy my father is..

more and more i seem to learn to live up to this family and become carl auboeck myself

designandfun:

thank you for the interview!