Dagobert Peche was ‘the greatest decorative genius that Austria has had since the Baroque Age’ (Berta Zuckerlandl). He studied at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna (1906) and the Academie der bildenden Künste (1908). From 1912, he worked as a freelance designer for Wiener Werkstätte with Hoffmann (1915-1923) and director of the new Wiener Werkstätte branch in Zurich (1917-1919), of which he designed the interior.
After his premature death in 1923, a memorial exhibition was held in Vienna at the Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie (Austrian Museum for Art and Industry), and his life’s work was summed up as follows: ‘Developing Josef Hoffmann’s ideas to the level of Romanticism, at a crucial time he subjugated arts and crafts, which must never sink into the dull sobriety of functional form, to the absolute formative will of the artist.’

Lit: Brandstätter, Christian, Wiener Werkstätte: Design in Vienna 1903-1932. Harry N. Abrams, pub. pp. 55