design - Austria / II. Republic of Austria 2003 - 138 Euro Cent

On the new special stamp a bottle and three of five glasses from the "Bar-Service Nr.248" according to a design of the designer, architect and critic Adolf Loos were presented. In his own words "a simple series with milled ground" made of hand-blown crystal glass, which had been relocated in 1931 at the company J. & L. Lobmeyer, which is still known today in Vienna's Kärntnerstraße for exclusive glassware. Deviating from this, this set is often referred to as a "wine service" in an unusual form from 1929. However, Loos, born in Brno in 1870, studied civil engineering and architecture in Reichenberg and Dresden and spent some years in the United States. Subsequently, he artistically sought in Vienna for the then state-of-the-art reduction to the essentials. His strict views against everything decorative, even against the Art Nouveau, the Vienna Secession and against the Wiener Werkstätten views did not always lead to such recognized elegant solutions as the illustrated service. With his publication "Ornament and Crime" he expressed this drastically. The house he created in 1909-11 at the Michaelerplatz in Vienna just opposite the Hofburg, today generally called Looshaus, shown on the special stamp dated 13.1.1995, published on the occasion of Loos' 125th birthday, was in his time quite controversial.