Designer: Richard Rohac (1906 – 1956)

Item: Wings Bookends

Manufactured by: Richard Rohac

Country of origin: Austria

Year made: Late 1940s

Materials: Patinated and unpolished brass

Dimensions: Each are 4 ½” x 4 ½” x 2”

Condition: Very good.  We have left these unpolished and as found estate condition, so there are some places where the patination is rubbed, as seen in the photos.

Description: Another fine, well executed and very elegant pair of patinated brass bookends by Richard Rohac.  Although not signed with Rohac reverse Rs or his unique Made in Austria marks, these do retain the impressed number 2, as shown, which we have seen on another identical pair of bookends that were signed, and that we now own. We fully guarantee these as authentic pieces by Richard Rohac. It is not uncommon for Rohac pieces to lack his signature of reverse Rs or his unique Made in Austria mark, and sometimes have numbers impressed.

This set was easy to date because the unpatinated edges show unevenness and blotchy brass indicative of brass works from Austria immediately after World War II when brass shell casings from munitions were melted for use.  The brass was very impure with imperfections creating this splotchy or quilted look to the unpatinated finish. This use of a very dark patination to obscure the impure brass was used by the major Vienna workshops.

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.  Often Rohac’s bookends, ashtrays and candlesticks compete well with the overall quality, craftsmanship and designs of the Vienna workshops of Hagenauer (where he apprenticed) and Carl Auböck, but at a much more reasonable price point.