Pair of 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 cachepots are decorated with medallions. They stand out slightly raised and offset from the wall, decorated in relief with stylized ornamentation. 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.
With these bronze pots 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.