DesignerAustrianb.1898–d.1956
Karl Hagenauer
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Born in Vienna in 1898, the same year his father Carl founded the family workshop, Karl Hagenauer grew up inside the craft as much as outside it. He enrolled at the Vienna School of Applied Arts at age eleven, where he studied under Josef Hoffmann and Oskar Strnad - two of the central figures in the Viennese design reform movement. After infantry service in the First World War he completed his training and qualified as an architect, bringing a structural sensibility to objects that were ultimately intended for living rooms and dressing tables.
Karl joined the family firm in 1919 and took over its direction together with his siblings Franz and Grete following their father's death in 1928. Under their leadership the Werkstätte expanded from metalwork into woodcarving, and opened sales branches in Vienna and Salzburg. The workshop produced household objects - ashtrays, mirrors, bookends, candlesticks, cigar cutters - alongside purely sculptural pieces, all sharing the same flat, stylised vocabulary that sits somewhere between the Wiener Werkstätte's decorative rigour and an emerging international Art Deco language.
His most discussed single work is probably the Josephine Baker figure, in which a brass body meets a turned wooden skirt - a combination of materials that characterises much of the workshop's output. The sculpture was featured in a 1935 window display by New York dealer Rena Rosenthal, helping open an American market that would sustain the Werkstätte for decades. Other popular subjects included elongated athletes, stylised animals, and female busts with simplified, almost mask-like features. The repetition of similar motifs across different scales and material combinations was part of the workshop's production logic rather than a limitation.
Hagenauer won two gold medals at the Milan Triennale for his work, reflecting the workshop's standing within European applied arts circles. His pieces were sold not only through Vienna and Salzburg but through dealers in the United States, and the Josephine Baker figure now sits in the collection of the Casa Lis Art Nouveau and Art Deco Museum in Salamanca. He continued to direct the Werkstätte until his death in 1956.
On the Nordic auction market Karl Hagenauer works appear most frequently at Dorotheum Vienna and im Kinsky, with 18 items recorded in the Auctionist database. Pieces include carved wooden sculptures and copper and brass water jugs stamped with the workshop's mark. Top recorded prices in the Nordic market sit in the range of 5,000-6,500 SEK, though individual pieces have traded significantly higher internationally, with Werkstätte Hagenauer lots reaching the low thousands of USD at specialist sales.