Lot 263 Dα

Cf. Newton, D. et al., "The Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Pacific Islands, Africa, and the Americas", New-York, 1987, p.37, for a similar shield with stylised mask on the central boss, acquired from Julius Carlebach in 1953.

Carl Otto Czeschka was born in Vienna and studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts from 1894. After graduating in 1897 he became an assistant teacher at the Academy. He became a member of the Wiener Werkstätte in 1905 and worked with Josef Hoffman on designs for the Palais Stoclet in Brussels where he designed seven windows with allegorical scenes for the music hall and the two marble reliefs "Archangel Michael" and "Allegorical female figure on the crescent moon" for the hall. From 1907 he taught graphic design, typography, book illustration, scene design, textile design and interior decoration at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg. In the late 1920s Czeschka became one of the foremost masters of "Neue Sachlichkeit" in Hamburg. After World War II he was selected to design the logo of the weekly newspaper "Die Zeit", a logo which is still in use today. Czeschka formed a large collection of ethnographic objects mainly acquired from his friend Julius Konietzko, whom he met in 1909 and would later become godfather to his two sons. After the death of Czeschka's wife, Martha, in 1951, Konietzko's wife, Elfriede, was one of the people who took care of him. Julius Konietzko died in 1952 and Czeschka and Elfriede married shortly before Czeschka's death. Some 600 objects from Czeschka's collection are today in the Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg.