(b Seret, Bukovina [now in the Ukraine], 28 July 1893; d Melbourne, 18 Aug 1971). Australian cabinetmaker of Austro-Hungarian birth. He was apprenticed in Seret as a cabinetmaker. After military service during World War I he worked in Vienna, Prague and other European cities as a furniture-maker before settling in Berlin in the 1920s. In 1935 he began work with the Berlin Umschichtungsstelle der Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland, an organization for the retraining of Jews who wished to emigrate. In 1939 he moved to Melbourne. By the end of World War II he had established his own business and was regarded by a small but influential audience as Australia’s finest contemporary furniture-maker and designer. Krimper’s designs show the influence of the Biedermeier style, of Central European folk furniture and of the later Deutsche Werkstätten furniture. His work evolved from such pieces, in pine and hardwoods, as simple cupboards, bookcases and chairs in the post-war years to his later, more ambitious cabinets and sideboards in a variety of carefully chosen woods. All feature high quality construction and finishes. He made considerable use of indigenous Australian and South Pacific woods, the rich figure, grain and colour of which provide the principal surface decoration.

• Krimper, Schulim
  • Australia, §V: Interior decoration
  • Australia, §VI, 2: Furniture, after c 1880