Gustav Gaudernack (1865-1914) was Norway’s leading Art Nouveau goldsmith. He was born in Bohemia and trained at the Vienna School of Applied Arts. He designed glass for Lobmeyr of Vienna until 1891 when he moved to Christiania (later renamed Oslo) and began designing glass for Christiania Glasmagasin, a prestigious glass and china retailer.

In 1892 Gaudernack began working for the goldsmith factory of David Andersen, ‘where his designs developed from those in a historicizing Norse manner to those in a full-blooded Art Nouveau style’ (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Gaudernack was chief designer at David Andersen until 1910 and established its worldwide reputation for enamelware. His work included openwork plique à jour, in which the thin films of translucent enamel are stretched between filigree wires, as well as champlevé, which involves cutting away troughs or cells in a metal object and then filling the hollows with enamel (see a set of champlevé spoons by Gaudernack for sale by Cotswold Antiques). Gaudernack and David Andersen won gold medals at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900 and the Grand Prix at the Saint Louis Exhibition of 1904.

In 1910 Gaudernack opened his own workshop selling Art Nouveau jewellery, and in 1912 became the first lecturer in jewellery design at Norway’s National Academy of Craft and Art Industry School. He died two years later after a failed appendectomy. The Gaudernack workshop continued until 1938 under the auspices of his widow and sons.

David Andersen (1843-1901) apprenticed with the jeweller Jacob Tostrup in Christiania, and started his own goldsmith workshop in the capital in 1876. A second retail outlet opened in 1892. On his father’s death in 1901, son Arthur Andersen took over, and decided to hyphenate the family name to David-Andersen. The business has remained in the family and is now run by members of the fourth generation, Uni and Jon David-Andersen.

© Cotswold Antiques 2018