#000557
Color Source Book of Authentic Art Nouveau Design
Max Benirschke
A full-color pattern portfolio reviving the ornamental designs of Max Benirschke, an Austrian designer of the Art Nouveau era, reissued by Dover in its Pictorial Archive series. The book reproduces 146 motifs — flowing, stylized floral and geometric patterns in the sinuous 'Jugendstil' idiom of turn-of-the-century Vienna and Düsseldorf — as copyright-free source material for artists, designers, and craftspeople. Compact but vivid, it captures the movement's love of organic line, flat decorative color, and rhythmic repetition. For anyone working in illustration, textiles, ceramics, or graphic design who wants authentic period ornament rather than pastiche, it offers ready-to-use patterns straight from a practicing designer of the age. It is a small book with a specific purpose: to put a slice of genuine Art Nouveau design back into working hands.
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The artist
Max Benirschke (1880–1950) was an Austrian designer and design teacher associated with the Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) movement. Trained in Vienna in the orbit of the Secession, he produced ornamental designs and pattern portfolios of the kind that spread the new decorative style to workshops and studios across German-speaking Europe.
The book
Color Source Book of Authentic Art Nouveau Design (Dover, 1984) reprints 146 of Benirschke's motifs in full color, with captions in English and German. It belongs to Dover's Pictorial Archive line, meaning the designs are offered copyright-free for reuse. At around 32 large-format pages it is a focused portfolio rather than a survey.
How to read it
As a source book it does exactly what it sets out to do, and public-domain ornament does not date. Its value is practical — clean, reusable, historically genuine Art Nouveau patterns — rather than scholarly; there is little text or context here beyond the plates. Designers wanting the real visual vocabulary of the movement, not a modern imitation, will find it useful; readers wanting the movement's history should look elsewhere.
For more context
Pair with broader collections such as Carol Belanger Grafton's Art Nouveau: The Essential Reference for scope and background.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Max Benirschke
- Publisher
- Dover Publications
- Place of publication
- Mineola, NY
- Year
- 1984
- ISBN
- 9780486245478
- Shelf
- Art
- Location
- Colorado