Anton Seder Grapevine - Art nouveau public domain image

Anton Seder, a painter from Munich, was the first director of the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (College of Decorative Arts), founded in 1890 by the city of Strasbourg as part of a plan for the artistic revival of the region. He remained as director until 1920 and also designed the decorative facade of the school’s building. Strasbourg had been ceded by France to Germany in 1871, and was returned to France in 1918. Therefore, the cultural environment was a mixture of French and German influences. Seder co-edited the magazine Das Kunstgewerbe in Elsass-Lothringen [The Arts and Crafts in Alsace-Lorraine]. His designs were also included in many periodicals of decorative arts designs, issued as chromolithographs. Seder’s best known separate works are Die Pflanze in Kunst und Gewerbe [The Plant in Art and Trade] (Gerlach & Schenk, Vienna: 1890), which incorporated plants into decorative motifs, and Das Thier in Der Decorativen Kunst [Animals in Decorative Art] (Gerlach & Schenk, Vienna: 1896-1909), similarly incorporating animals and mythical dragons into decorative motifs.