Designer: Richard Rohac (1906 – 1956)

Item: Pen or Pencil Tray

Manufactured by: Richard Rohac

Country of origin: Austria

Year made: Circa late 1940s

Materials: Patinated and unpolished brass

Dimensions: ½” x 9 ¾” x 3 1/8”

Condition: Excellent

Description: Another very fine and well executed patinated brass work by Richard Rohac.  Many of Rohac’s better pieces hold up in both design and craftsmanship to his contemporaries such as Hagenauer and Auböck.  Marked with the correct reverse Rs and “Made in Austria” as shown in the photograph. 

This is likely an immediate post WWII object because patination was used to obscure the impurities in the brass that was used by melting down shell casings from spent munitions. This was a method also utilized by the Hagenauer and Auböck shops because of the scarcity of materials. The unpainted rim has slight tonal differences that are the result of using this less pure brass.

This is similar in design to some brass pencil trays produced by Carl Auböck.  Rohac was a master metal craftsman who began and completed his apprenticeship with the Werkstatte Hagenauer in Vienna, Austria as a teenager and stayed with the workshop another nine years before opening his own metalwork business in 1932.