Milestones

Real calf parch­ment con­trasts lac­quer, brass or wal­nut – all hand­made to the smal­lest detail. The life of the parch­ment can not and should not be tamed, cre­at­ing an extraordin­ary atmo­sphere.

High-touch in the form of a high-qual­ity product that becomes a life com­pan­ion. Mat­teo Thun, archi­tect and design­er about his exper­i­ences in work­ing with Strolz: “Noth­ing is more dif­fi­cult than the sim­pli­city, Mrs. Strolz ist very good in that dis­cip­line”

The golden inner rein­forces the reflec­tion of the light. Baked stain­less steel is used for the bronze-colored foot.

The Vor­arl­berg archi­tect Marc Hof­fenscher stud­ied with Wolf D. Prix at the Uni­ver­sity of Applied Arts in Vienna and at the Bart­lett School of Archi­tec­ture in Lon­don and has been oper­at­ing his office in Dorn­birn since 2005. His motiv­a­tions for work­ing with Strolz: “The motiv­a­tion lies in the deep com­mon con­vic­tion to put the full atten­tion and energy in the design and man­u­fac­ture of lumin­aires and not com­prom­ise.”

Designed by Peter Zumthor, the Werkraum­haus becomes a stage and the artis­an­al exhib­its become act­ors in a con­stantly chan­ging game of day­light and arti­fi­cial light. In the imma­ter­i­al and atmo­spher­ic light­ing archi­tec­ture, the objects are cap­tured in space. Their sur­faces and shapes come alive and draw a graph­ic shad­ow theat­er on the floor of the build­ing.

At dif­fer­ent light sta­tions, vis­it­ors can get to the bot­tom of qual­it­ies and phe­nom­ena of light. Because good light­ing plan­ning con­trib­utes sig­ni­fic­antly to our well-being in our liv­ing and work­ing spaces and can advant­age­ously mod­el rooms and fur­nish­ings.

Under the guid­ance of the design col­lect­ive diaméter, stu­dents of the Roy­al Col­lege of Art (RCA) are encour­aged to reflect on their own pos­i­tion as design­ers in rela­tion to the expert­ise gathered in the Werkraum Bre­gen­zer­wald. The work­shops of sev­en work­shops, includ­ing Strolz lumin­aires, serve as research labor­at­or­ies.

The cooper­a­tion between Francesco Fel­trin and Strolz reveals the strengths of both part­ners. The design­er designs a very eleg­ant lumin­aire in terms of pro­por­tions, col­or choices and mater­i­als. Fel­trin is strongly geared to Strolz, on the one hand with expert­ise in lamp­shades and, on the oth­er, with the use of tra­di­tion­al, region­al mater­i­als.

Flipped and glued – this time in the form of lamp shades as a res­ult of the col­lab­or­a­tion of Tone Fink and Anna Claudia Strolz. The Bre­gen­zer­wald artist faces the chal­lenges of the cyl­indric­al can­vas with dif­fer­ent tech­niques. An exper­i­ment that ulti­mately becomes a pleas­ur­able exper­i­ence: “The curves are extremely exhaust­ing, in con­trast to the flat screen. The col­ors dis­ap­pear and the pat­terns that I make without sign­ing, you lose the over­view eas­ily. That is the highest con­cen­tra­tion work. Anna Claudia has always encour­aged me. ”

The res­ult is “thorns” and “ponds” of impasto acryl­ic paints, dynam­ic­ally har­mo­ni­ous “script writ­ing exer­cises” with tex­tile pen­cil and “injur­ies” with sharp cuts. Each of the 17 lights of this edi­tion bears the unmis­tak­able sig­na­ture of Tone Fink and is an exclus­ive and unique piece. Anna Claudia Strolz: ” The idea to devel­op spe­cial lamps and lamp­shades togeth­er with the artist Tone Fink inter­ested me for a long time.

One day we met in his stu­dio. There I saw a pic­ture of the ponds and imme­di­ately motiv­ated him to trans­fer this tech­nique to a lamp­shade. That’s how it got star­ted.

Collection Artone Lighting

In the mid-1990s, Tone Fink already had a very excit­ing exper­i­ence with the design of tex­tiles. Rather coin­cid­ent­ally, the Hohenems tex­tile indus­tri­al­ist Wil­helm Otten dis­covered the work of Bre­gen­zer­wald artist Tone Fink for fab­ric pro­duc­tion. This was the begin­ning of the suc­cess story of the “Artone” col­lec­tions pro­duced by Josef Otten between 1994 and 2000. Tem­plates for the fab­rics were Tone Fink’s sketch­books with finely chiseled pat­terns made of Japan­ese ink.

The MAK (Museum of Applied Arts) in Vienna honored the cooper­a­tion between the indus­tri­al enter­prise Josef Otten and the con­tem­por­ary artist in 2006 in an exhib­i­tion as a suc­cess­ful cooper­a­tion.

Almost three dec­ades after her cre­ation, Anna Claudia Strolz dis­cov­ers the remains of these fab­rics for her lumin­aires, cre­at­ing the “Artone Light­ing” lamp­shade col­lec­tion. She con­tin­ues to be fas­cin­ated by the ele­ment­ally simple yet subtle orna­ments of the artist, she is con­vinced: “I am thrilled that there are still a few Artone fab­rics, so that I can now com­ple­ment the exem­plary col­lab­or­a­tion between industry and art with a craft product.”

In the pub­lic­a­tion issued by the com­pany Otten in 1997, CEO Wil­helm Otten wrote about the aes­thet­ic aura of “Artone” fab­rics: “Fink’s min­im­al­ist express­ive hand­writ­ing meets the trend towards pur­ist­ic design. His organ­ic rhythmic draw­ings are also very well suited for use in tex­tile print­ing, but also in the jacquard weav­ing tech­nique.”

Edel­bert Köb (at that time dir­ect­or of the Kun­sthaus Bre­genz) described in the now out-of-print book Tone Fink’s sketch­books as an impress­ive encyc­lo­pe­dia of the simplest and most fun­da­ment­al struc­tures and orna­ments: “Pat­tern books are full of Fink’s find­ings and inven­tions, writ­ten down in his unmis­tak­able style, in limbo between nature and art. As you can see, they make beau­ti­ful fab­rics. ”

Artist web­site

Strolz Leucht­en pro­duces the lim­ited edi­tion of 30 pieces. The KUB Artist Edi­tion is being cre­ated on the occa­sion of the exhib­i­tion “Where­with­al – What it Needs” at the Kun­sthaus Bre­genz. Lawrence Wein­er is co-founder of the Amer­ic­an Con­cep­tu­al Art and is one of the most fam­ous artists world­wide.

KUB – Web­site

Atelier Stech­er designed a walk-in col­or wheel for this work­room show, which draws in the form of a loop through the Werkraum­haus in Andels­buch. Each exhib­it has its own col­or space. The expans­ive install­a­tion, which fea­tures the 700m2 interi­or and partly also the glass façade of the Werkraum house, con­trasts in col­or with the mono­chrome design of the build­ing designed by Peter Zumthor.

“Back Ahead – New Aus­tri­an Design Per­spect­ives”, the cent­ral theme of the exhib­i­tion in Mil­an, is con­ceived as an inter­play of per­spect­ives on Aus­tri­an design his­tory and the future-ori­ented devel­op­ment of Aus­tri­an cre­at­ives. The cur­at­or is the Tyr­olean design­er Georg Oehler, who lives in Lon­don. The exhib­i­tion site is the fam­ous Villa Nec­chi Cam­piglio, an archi­tec­tur­al jew­el in the cen­ter of Mil­an.

The light­ing series Pon­dus is inspired by con­tem­por­ary archi­tec­ture. The design idea has a sur­pris­ingly simple root. It is based on a met­al candle hold­er with con­crete cast­ing designed by Anna Claudia Strolz. The design­er trans­fers this prin­ciple to the lumin­aire. The Pon­dus light series is one of the selec­ted exhib­its of the exhib­i­tion “Back Ahead” of Außen­wirtschaft Aus­tria dur­ing the Salone del Mobile in Mil­an 2016.

The inspir­a­tion for this col­lab­or­a­tion is the “rouge et noir” feast held by Paul Ren­ner in the exhib­i­tion. The lamp­shades made of pure lin­en are painted with self-cre­ated veget­able col­ors, so the motive of the red beets tubers is at the same time col­or mater­i­al.

With her light­ing edi­tions Anna Claudia Strolz exper­i­ments in research fields bey­ond her usu­al range. In cooper­a­tion with artists, spe­cial lumin­aires are pro­duced in lim­ited edi­tions. On the one hand, such col­lab­or­a­tions are excit­ing encoun­ters of art and design, on the oth­er hand, insights into work­ing tech­niques and mater­i­als lead to new ideas in the clas­sic lumin­aires.

Artist web­site

From the artist’s estate, Anna Claudia Strolz and the sons Her­mann and Lukas Fetz chose three wooden print­ing blocks for the lamp­shades: Reit­er­gruppe (rider group) 1967, Hüt­ten und Bäume (lodges and trees) 1972 and Holzmaser­ung (wood grain) in 1978. Accord­ing to the “Holz­schnitte Werk­verzeich­nis 1949 – 1988”, these works are little to no not pub­lished. The art col­lect­or and crit­ic Albert Graf-Bour­quin writes in his fore­word: “For Leo­pold Fetz, wood­cuts are hand­writ­ten mes­sages or let­ters. That also applies to his paint­ing.”

With the three mod­els by Leo­pold Fetz, Anna Claudia Stolz designs 33 exclus­ive lamp­shades. “What par­tic­u­larly appeals to me about this work is the chal­lenge of tex­tile print­ing with a wood­b­lock that Leo­pold Fetz carved for paper print­ing. It is import­ant for me to emphas­ize that I see myself as a design­er and crafts­wo­man, who is inspired by a work of art. I pro­duce every­day objects that are beau­ti­ful and use­ful at the same time. I leave the art to the artists.

The 120 m2 busi­ness premises from 1874 are being ren­ov­ated in cooper­a­tion with Bre­gen­zer­wald crafts­men. The his­tor­ic spruce planks are pre­served. In addi­tion, brass and bison leath­er floors are laid. The silky, shiny, tender green wall is smoothed with lime and soaped accord­ing to a tech­nique from Roman times. For the fur­niture cre­ated by Anna Claudia Strolz togeth­er with the car­penter and the lock­smith, brass and chest­nut and oak wood are used.

From “Appar­ently shine” we now Strolz Leucht­en. Own­er Anna Claudia Strolz: “The micro-entre­pren­eur status is over, Bre­gen­zer­wald crafts and design have a great chance to be mar­keted inter­na­tion­ally as a niche product. Region­al­ity and indi­vidu­al­ity are more in demand than ever. Here I am part of the vis­ion of a design mile in Bre­genz. With the flag­ship store I now have an attract­ive show­room for archi­tects, hoteliers and private cli­ents.”

Anna Claudia Strolz, b. 1973, comes from a Bre­gen­zer­wald crafts­man fam­ily. Her par­ents, Hed­wig and Wern­er Beer, grew up with lights that, after some detours, became their own pas­sion dec­ades later.