Bronze cachepot Gustav Gurschner ca. 1908

Gustav Gurschner is one of the most important sculptors of Viennese Jugendstil. He was a member of the artists’s association Vienna Secession and Hagenbund, contributing his distinctive designes to Austrian arts and crafts around 1900.
Among Gurschner’s artistically designed utilitarian objects we find also flowerpots. This medium-sized cachepot is decorated with medallions. They stand out slightly raised and offset from the wall, decorated in relief with stylized pelicans and lobsters. Four fluted metal bands divide the vessel vertically, decoratively concealing the soldered joints where the four identical parts of the cachepot had been put together.
Bronze lends the vessel quite an archaic appearance, while the exotic animal motifs could well have been inspired by the aesthetics of Japanese woodblock prints en vogue at that time.
With this bronze pot Gurschner proved once again to have found an answer to the much discussed question around 1900, of whether and how objects of applied art should be decorated.
This vessel was part a very knowledgeable Viennese Jugendstil collection.