One of the great exceptions is the Wiener Werkstatte, founded 101 years ago. The style is more popular today than ever. Laura Muir, a curator at Harvard’s Busch-Reisinger Museum, explains why ...

Men—namely Josef Hoffmann, Dagobert Peche, and Koloman Moser—ruled at the Wiener Werkstätte ... the company’s furnishings and interiors, it was a delectable output.

(You’d also be forgiven for not knowing how to properly pronounce the name.) But Wiener Werkstätte is actually one of the earliest 20th century’s most creative, and important, design workshops.

With Secessionist and Wiener Werkstätte museum shows from coast to coast this month, those renowned Vienna art and design movements are front and center in San Francisco and New York. Though the ...