Ena Rottenberg

Ena Rottenberg (born Emma Helena Rottenberg; 9 November 1893 – 4 June 1952) was a Hungarian-Austrian craftswoman, draftswoman, ceramist and member of the artists' community of the Wiener Werkstätte.

Career Ena Rottenberg began studying at the Vienna School of Applied Arts (K.K. Kunstgewerbeschule) in 1916. Her teachers included the sculptors Josef Breitner and Anton Hanak and the painter Anton von Kenner. In the mid-1920s, she designed four stained-glass windows for a Viennese convent of Franciscan nuns.

In the 1920s, Ena Rottenberg worked not only with the Wiener Werkstätte but also with the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory Augarten, Friedrich Goldscheider, the Gobelin Manufactory and the J. & L. Lobmeyr Glass Manufactory.

Together with Carl Drobnik & Sons, she developed bright, transparent enamel colors for Lobmeyr. In addition to enamel decorations, she also created engraved and relief-carved large glass vessels. In 1925 she was invited to present vases with black enamel decoration and the showpiece "Die Welle Woge" (The Billowing Wave), which was to form the focal point of the glass section of the 1925 exhibition, at the Exposition Internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels Modernes in Paris. Rottenberg received a gold medal for her designs.

From 1923 to 1925, Ena Rottenberg was a student of Michael Powolny, who had a lasting influence on her work. Mathilde Jaksch, Ida Schwetz-Lehmann and Dina Kuhn, In 1931 she took part with her designs in the exhibition of the Austrian Women Artists Association.

In the 1930s she drew designs for various tapestries for the Viennese Gobelins manufactory. After the Second World War she worked again for Augarten and made decorative designs for coffee sets, vases and lidded boxes. Ena Rottenberg died in Vienna on 4 June 1952.

Her designs and objects are now shown in glass, porcelain and design museums at home and abroad, including the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Corning Museum of Glass, the RISD Museum, the Porzellanmuseum of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory Augarten, the Passau Glass Museum, the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.