Oscar B. Bach
German-born craftsman and designer Oscar Bruno Bach (1884-1957) was among the most skilled and successful commercial metalworkers of the early twentieth century. His designs and production ranged from small, domestic objects to grand architectural installations. He worked in many styles popular at the time, and thematically favored the Zodiac, classical masks, mythological symbols and elements of the Italianate and Germanic grotesque.
Born in Breslau in 1884 as Oscar Bruno Bakstk, he studied painting at Berlin's Royal Academy and had a four-year apprenticeship in metalwork. From 1898-1902 he attended the Imperial Academy of Art in Berlin, after which time he became the artistic director of a metallic arts firm in Hamburg. Between 1904 and 1911, Bach worked successfully as a metalsmith in Germany, while maintaining a second studio in Venice and traveling extensively in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. In 1911, he won the Grand Prix at the Turin world's fair for a bed he designed for Kaiser Wilhelm II. In that same year he joined his brother Max in the United States and established a business in New York City, first in Greenwich Village (as Bach Brothers) and later on West 17th Street as Oscar B. Bach Studios (1913-1923). In 1923, the Bach brothers moved again, to West 42nd Street. They had an acrimonious split with their partner in the 17th Street studio who continued to make many of Bach's designs at the old location, even marking them with Bach's name. Bach's advertisements at the time noted that only work bearing his facsimile signature was genuine, which explains why his mark is shown in script. He also took out sixty-six design patents to try to protect his work. An ornamental design for a standing ash tray or smoking stand that is similar to #681 was patented in May 1927 (Serial No. 22,187).
In the late 1930s he relocated his showroom to the prestigious British Empire Building on Fifth Avenue and operated under the business name of Bach Products. Manufacturing facilities were in Paterson, New Jersey. In 1941, Bach reorganized his business, discontinuing his decorative arts work to become a metallist for some of America's top firms, such as Remington-Rand, Baldwin Locomotive, American Radiator Company and others. In addition to the many small domestic objects he designed during his career, he executed many architectural commissions, especially in New York City, including Riverside Church, Temple Emanu-el, the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center, the Woolworth Building, and many others. Perhaps his crowning achievement is the huge inlaid steel mural he fabricated and installed in 1931 in the Empire State Building.
Oscar Bach's work is included in the collections of the Vatican, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and Wolfsonian-FIU Museum (Miami), as well as Reynolda House.
