Manufacture Friedrich Goldscheider, Sculptor “Cherc”, Symbolist vase, Circa 1901, glazed terracotta, Austria

This marked, numbered and signed vase is an astonishing testimony to the importance of the Goldscheider factory on the international artistic scene at the turn of the 20th century. Its iconography and decoration reveal a superb alchemy between the European Symbolist heritage of the 1880s and 1890s and the style advocated by Art Nouveau artists. Since its creation in 1885, Friedrich Goldscheider’s factory has been at the forefront of the Viennese ceramics industry. It set the trend and played a full part in the revival of artistic ceramics in the last decades of the 20th century. The company’s many assets include its own technique, glazed terracotta, the best sculptors and ceramists in Central Europe, and its unfailing inventiveness.