Wicker furniture Haus Schulenburg
fromDesign: Henry van de Velde on 1906?
Execution: Basket weaver Ernst Schmiedeknecht, Tannroda/Thuringia
Material: cane, softwood frame, table top and inside of cupboard doors mahogany
This room was furnished with light green wicker furniture (including a desk and a bookcase) (Erika Schulenburg).
After 1945, both pieces of furniture were in the possession of Lothar Spitz, owner of a colour print shop in Gera and school friend of Wolfgang Schulenburg, Paul Schulenburg’s eldest son.
In 2011, Prof Peter Spitz, an X-ray specialist from Cologne and son of Lothar Spitz, returned the wicker cabinet to Haus Schulenburg. The cabinet was painted with dark brown latex paint. The two remaining side parts of the desk followed in 2012.
The furniture was reconstructed in the restoration workshop of Henry Flach, Auma/Thuringia and the Tietze basket weaving workshop in Birkhausen.
In 2013, the restored wicker furniture on display in Haus Schulenburg prompted Mr Dankmar Bosse (grandson of Hugo Bosse, owner of the August Bosse furniture store in Weimar from 1904 to 1929) to provide us with a production catalogue for wicker furniture from 1905.
The furniture store August Bosse had this furniture produced by the company Ernst Schmiedeknecht in Tannroda. The catalogue contains around 100 designs by Henry van de Velde. Van de Velde had a 10% share of sales. The sale of this wickerwork was very successful, including in the well-known Wertheim department stores’ in Berlin. The August Bosse company exhibited wicker furniture at the 3rd International Arts and Crafts Exhibition in Dresden in 1906. At this exhibition, Paul Schulenburg presumably purchased the wicker furniture for his daughter Gunhilde and for the flower room as well as the dining room.