Description

In the early 1900s, bending and cutting sheet metal to produce dynamic shapes was one of the most common techniques used to teach natural form in design schools in Vienna. From this method evolved the commercial production of small polished or enameled figures of popular animals from the circus or farm—including giraffes, foxes, and dogs—exaggerated in their modernist forms. The toy animals made for the Hagenauer Workshop in Vienna in the early 1930s by artisan Reinhold Duschka reveal a poignant connection to the Second World War. He harbored the young Jewish girl Lucia Heilmann and her mother from the Nazis within the walls of his studio, helping them elude capture during the Holocaust.