Dining room cabinet

While Ede Toroczkai Wigand’s early designs were influenced by French Art Nouveau, and his individual ‘plank style’ seems to have been informed by the achievements of contemporary design in England and Scotland, some of his objects drew inspiration from the forms of the Viennese Secession. This latter is exemplified by the dining room set he presented at the 1902 Christmas exhibition of the National Society of Applied Arts (see IM Adattár, FLT 4848). The armchairs of the set are clearly a variation on the bent wood armchairs Otto Wagner designed for the Austrian Postal Savings Bank in Vienna, while the cabinet also reflects the influence of the Viennese Secession. A cuboid with rounded edges, this relatively low cabinet rests on a base covered with a silver-plated band of brass. There is an open shelf in the centre of the lower part, above which there are two doors with glass panels, followed by two drawers. There is a door on each side, attached to the carcass with hinges, and decorated, at the height of the lower drawer, with a row of ‘peonies,’ composed of circular inlays of silver, rosewood and cedar. The upper section of the cabinet has two doors in the centre, each with four glass panels, and two solid doors on the sides, which, like their counterparts below, wrap around the corners and are attached to the carcass with hinges. While the simple form and the use of expensive materials—rosewood veneer, silver inlay, silver-plated fittings—reflect the influence of Viennese design, in formal terms the cabinet is not unlike the simpler furniture Wigand Toroczkai made from cheaper materials (studio cabinets, secretaires, sideboards, cupboards). The original set also included a square table, with legs whose bottom was also covered with silver-plated brass, and a pyramidal longcase clock.

The Museum of Applied Arts purchased the cabinet after the Christmas exhibition, in 1903.