Two German mosaic panels by Wilhelm Wiegmann (1851-1920), late 19th century/early 20th century

Wilhelm Wiegmann (1851-1920) is unusual among mosaicists for his German identity – indeed, he is a central figure to the birth of mosaics as an active craft within Germany during the later 19th century. While mosaics had long been a quintessentially Italian art form, the rise of German cultural nationalism in the later 19th century bolstered an increasingly nativist attitude to the fine and applied arts that was averse to excessive reliance on importing foreign crafts. After training at the Prussian Academy of Arts in the 1870s, Wiegmann created the first fully independent studio for the production of mosaics in Germany in 1886, alongside August Wagner. Once the prominent chemist Friedrich Puhl joined the team in 1889, the studio took the name Deutsche Glasmosaik-Anstalt Puhl & Wagner, and went on to flourish in the decades preceding the First World War. In the context of a culturally assertive Germany keen to prove itself through sumptuous new constructions, the studio had plentiful commissions for religious projects like the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, and also from secular buildings like the Hotel Bristol and the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm.