Pola Stout

Josefine Pola Stout (née Weinbach, January 8, 1902 – October 12, 1984) was an American designer best known for creating fine woolen fabrics.

Pola Stout was born Josefine Pola Weinbach, daughter of Schulem and Betty Eliasiewicz (Tune) Weinbach, on January 8, 1902.

She was born in Stryj, a city that was then part of Austria-Hungary and was later part of Poland.

As a child she befriended dressmakers and used the scraps from their cutting tables to fashion clothing for her dolls, which she displayed in a window facing the street.

She was unable to persuade her parents to let her pursue a career in art; instead, she was sent to the University of Lemberg to study philosophy.

In addition to her coursework there she worked for a milliner, and saved enough money to run away to Vienna.

On the day of her arrival she arranged to study at the Kunstgewerbe Schule (now the University of Applied Arts Vienna) with Josef Hoffmann.

To save money for tuition, she slept on a park bench for her first six weeks in the Austrian capital.

During her four years of study at the Kunstgewerbe Schule, Pola Weinbach designed textiles for the Wiener Werkstätte and worked for Sigmund Freud, repairing a Gobelin tapestry.

She then lived in Paris, working at a fabric house that supplied haute couture, and then moved to Berlin.

Born in Stryj, she studied with Josef Hoffmann at the Kunstgewerbe Schule in Vienna, and designed for the Wiener Werkstätte before she immigrated to the United States in 1925 with her first husband, architect and designer Wolfgang Hoffmann.

Wolfgang and Pola Hoffmann became a prominent interior design team that contributed to the development of American modernism in the early 20th century.

On December 28, 1925, she married Wolfgang Hoffmann, Josef Hoffmann's son, who was on his way to New York to work as an assistant to architect-designer Joseph Urban.

The couple immigrated to the United States, and after nine months with Urban they formed their own independent design partnership with offices on Madison Avenue in Manhattan.

Their first years in America were difficult; Wolfgang worked in a machine shop, and Pola made lampshades and women's hats.

Commissions began with two art house cinemas in New York—the St. George Playhouse in Brooklyn (1927) and the Little Carnegie Playhouse in Manhattan (1928).

Located only a few steps east of Carnegie Hall, the Little Carnegie was an intimate modernist theater in contrast to the opulent movie palaces then in vogue.

In addition to the main auditorium, the unique layout included an art gallery, bridge room, ping-pong room and a lounge and dance floor.

In 1928 they were among the 14 architects and designers who founded the American Designers' Gallery—"devoted exclusively to showing objects and interiors for practical use" —and they were among those who established the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen (AUDAC), the most ambitious professional design group of the era.

Pola Hoffmann's interior design commissions included the New York apartment of Charles J. Liebman and the still-extant Weiler Building (1928) at 407 South Warren Street, Syracuse, New York.

The Madison Avenue shop of Rena Rosenthal carried their line of accessories—pewter cigarette holders and ashtrays, and desk sets in natural woods and pewter—which was praised by The New Yorker: "These pleasant utilitarian features are totally unadorned; their line and proportion, both of which are a joy to behold, are all they have by way of ornamentation, and it's plenty."

In 1930, AUDAC exhibited furnishings and decorative arts at the Grand Central Palace in five model rooms, one designed by the Hoffmanns.

After her second marriage Pola Stout was an influential textile designer, one of a select group that pioneered a craft weaving revival in the 1930s.

Her large, light-filled workroom was in the east wing of the second floor of High Meadow.

She had two daughters and a harmonious, productive household with Rex Stout.

The New York Times noted that "while she is spinning yarns in one wing of their hill-top farmhouse, he is spinning his yarns about Nero Wolfe in another."

High Meadow Loom supplied the top fashion houses in New York City and created collections for Dunhill and Otterburn in Great Britain.

In 1931 they contributed an office interior to a large and important exhibition by AUDAC members, organized by Wolfgang Hoffmann and Kem Weber at the Brooklyn Museum.

The Hoffmanns often made opportunities to exhibit their work, and created contemporary American furnishings and interiors for shops, restaurants, and private clients including Mrs. Otto C. Sommerich and Helena Rubinstein.

"It would indeed be progress, if through mass production there would be an output of commodities that bore a simple directness of design," Pola Hoffmann said in a 1931 interview.

"By choosing only those things that are simple, we derive greater satisfaction from them—we do not tire of them so quickly. … Only those furnishings should be purchased that we feel are necessary, that serve a utilitarian purpose. The more simple and practical the furniture and accessories, the less work is required to keep them clean. This is equally true for clothes."

In late 1931, writer Lewis Gannett and his wife Ruth (previously married to designer Egmont Arens) took Wolfgang and Pola Hoffmann with them when they visited author Rex Stout, who was building a modernist concrete-and-steel house of his own design on a hill between Brewster, New York, and Danbury, Connecticut.

The marriages of the Stouts and the Hoffmanns were troubled, and both ended the following year.

They dissolved their successful partnership in 1932, when she married popular mystery author Rex Stout.

Pola Stout was an influential textile designer after her second marriage.

Pola Hoffmann and Rex Stout were married on December 21, 1932, in a civil ceremony at his home, High Meadow.

She became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1936.

She was executor of Rex Stout's literary estate after her husband's death in 1975.

Demolished in 1982, the venue was prized by sophisticated New Yorkers for its austere silver-and-black interior and its dedication to international film.

Less known today than some of their industrial design colleagues who were more adept at self-promotion, Wolfgang and Pola Hoffmann were among the immigrants who made significant contributions to the development of American modernism and the American Modern design aesthetic in the early 20th century.