What Wiener Silber Manufactur is known for

Wiener Silber Manufactur traces its roots to the Alexander Sturm silver workshop founded in Vienna in 1882, a partner of the Wiener Werkstätte by 1900. The relaunched company holds an archive of about 11,000 drawings with the original tools and punches. It reissues cutlery by Josef Hoffmann and Otto Prutscher beside pieces by Zaha Hadid and Tomas Alonso. Everything is made by hand in a workshop in the south of the city and sold at the Spiegelgasse 14 boutique.

Wiener Silber Manufactur is the continuation of one of Vienna's older craft firms. The silver manufactory of Alexander Sturm was founded in 1882. By 1900 it had become a principal partner of the Wiener Werkstätte, producing designs by Josef Hoffmann and Kolo Moser. Later it commissioned Otto Prutscher and Oswald Haerdtl. The original firm closed in 1988. The entrepreneur Georg Stradiot revived it, acquiring the old punches and tools along with the archive, which holds roughly 11,000 design drawings. The new company carries all the rights of the former producer. Selected models are reproduced faithfully from those documents. The boutique at Spiegelgasse 14 in the Innere Stadt shows Hoffmann's cutlery pattern 135 of 1902. Prutscher's pattern 181 from the early Art Deco years and his pumpkin set of 1930 stand nearby, along with bowls and candleholders after historicist models. Contemporary work sits beside them, among it vases by Zaha Hadid and a tea service by Tomas Alonso. Several pieces were developed through the Passionswege programme of Vienna Design Week since 2011. The Viennese architect Michael Embacher designed the shop across 33 square metres. He specified a flexible furniture system in plum wood, a floor of pressed basalt and silver leaf on the walls. Production is by hand at the company's workshop in the south of Vienna. Each piece carries the four-leaf clover mark of the house. The boutique also handles repairs and wedding lists for customers who want a service built over time.