Circle of Michael Powolny - Putto with Flowers

This is not a figurine. It was never meant to stand alone. This putto was the centrepiece of a decorative table sculpture, made to anchor a dining table or salon display. The centrepiece broke. Everything else is gone. This figure survived: someone fitted a copper rim to the base and gave it new life as a standalone piece, an adaptation now itself part of the object's history. The modelling, a chubby, downward-gazing infant clutching a bouquet of stylized flowers on a relief-decorated base, is consistent with the putto production of Michael Powolny (1871-1954), co-founder of Wiener Keramik in 1906 and the defining figure of Viennese Jugendstil ceramics. Unsigned, unmarked; attribution rests on modelling quality, glaze character, and formal vocabulary, c. 1907-1915. One piece, one new owner, then closed. ✦