Milestones

Inner life 

5 under one roof — Meus­burg­er, Fröwis, Lenz, Strolz. As inte­ri­or pecial­ists, the joiner’s work­shop, the floor installer, the stone­ma­son and the light­ing man­u­fac­tur­er pre­sent­ed them­selves togeth­er. The dis­tillery “brenn.” addi­tion­al­ly gaves insights into their craft. A tem­po­rary stu­dio was the show­case for the excel­lent crafts­man­ship of the five Bre­gen­z­er­wald com­pa­nies.

Strolz at the Inter­na­tion­al Crafts Fair in Munich
Our light series Brera, was pre­sent­ed on the Green Cam­pus of the craft fair in Munich. With 125,000 vis­i­tors and 2500 square meters of space for the pre­sen­ta­tion and sale of green prod­ucts, the Green Cam­pus is the largest green mar­ket­place in Europe.

The prod­ucts of the Green Selec­tion were pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic on the 350 sqm spe­cial award area.

Green Prod­uct Award Selec­tion

See the prod­ucts:

Brera table lamp, wal­nut / brass, white linen

Brera table lamp brass bur­nished / brass, black plis­sé fab­ric, gold­en inner

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 700 m² 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.