Seal Gustav Gurschner K.K. Kunst-Erzgiesserei ca. 1909

Living and working around the turn of the 20th century, the sculptor Gustav Gurschner was able to draw from a huge canon of forms and develop his own formal language from them.
Thus, he designed this figurative two-part seal showing a medieval-looking female figure. The courtly lady stands on a bell-like pedestal and is wrapped in a floor-length cloak. Her head covered with a hood and hands crossed on her chest, she keeps her gaze demurely lowered.
The part with the seal stands on a bell, its walls decorated with ornamental reliefs. Gurschner used exact the same motif for the design of a table bell. Both objects can be dated to around 1909 and are depicted in the sales catalogue of the Viennese foundry Kunst-Erzgiesserei, which produced and sold many of Gurschner’s designs.