Traipsing about the cobblestoned streets of old Vienna can conjure thoughts of a time before human hands were replaced by industrial machines to create; before words like artisan, craftsmanship, sustainable had been kidnapped and held captive as buzz words by marketing moguls. It’s enough to make you realise that human-made beauty was not built with a complimentary IKEA Allen Key.
But before your nostalgia breaks down into sobs (for a bygone era none of us ever experienced), take heart, as there’s been various sightings in Vienna of the endangered species known as the artisan – a new generation of craftsmen practicing ancient and traditional techniques with their own modern twist.
The story behind this young shoe designer label is as delightfully original as the bold creations by its founders, Yuji Mizobuchi and Simone Springer. It all began when Mizobuchi, a Kyoto-born trained Japanese Buddhist monk sought a career change and went to London to study footwear and accessories where he met Springer, who hails from Salzburg and whose curiosity for shoes was sparked after finding the tools of her late shoemaker grandfather.
Their subsequent collaboration has seen numerous hand-made collections of daring, original designs since 2001. By taking traditional Austrian production techniques (e.g. indigo printing) and textiles, and integrating them into modern, cosmopolitan masterpieces for the feet, it wouldn’t be unusual for one to recognize their grandmother’s table cloth in a Rosa Mosa shoe.
Since setting up their second-hand sewing machines amongst the whiffs of craft glue and leather in an old Vienna factory building, they have gone international, exporting their designs all over the world, with a particularly large following of shoe groupies in Japan
A childhood fascination in comic books, an appreciation for the traditional craft of a goldsmith and a fertile imagination sprung from a love for graphic design is what inspires the designs of Vienna’s Ring King, Max Grün.
Rather than preserving an ancient craft, Gruen is recreating it. While his collection includes subtle plays on traditional ring styles (with one series exhibiting various city’s skylines) his signature pieces will put a protruding cheeky monkey on your finger.
The combination of traditional technique with modern interpretation is what Grün believes allows the craftsman to make a mark on the future owner. “Every piece made by hand is unique and has its own story – the person that buys it will not look at it as just a ring but rather as the story behind it when they discovered the little shop down that little cobblestone alleyway in Vienna.”
The Viennese revolutionaries of headwear, Muehlbauer, were born humbly at a time when men and women would not leave home without wearing a hat. And today, while the hat market has changed dramatically, the way Muehlbauer produces its hats is exactly the same as a hundred years ago – by hand.
“Muehlbauer was founded by a woman in 1903!” says Klaus, a fourth-generation hatter of the Muehlbauer family, putting emphasis on the word woman. The woman in question is his great-grandmother, who married to a hatter and – amazingly for this era – founded and drove the business through the First World War.
It was Mr. Muehlbauer, however, who carried on and reinvented the family company from a maker of traditional Austrian hats and clothing to a boutique hat maker with avant-garde designs to take on the head of the 21st century. While retaining many of the traditional designs that his great-grandparents made before him, he has led the business into a creative realm where the artisan has become the artist.
From its humble beginnings, today Muehlbauer holds an international reputation with the Japanese holding a particular fetish for their hats – a whopping 40 percent of their exports are destined for the island nation.