Family Coat of Arms of Narbut family 1914

Heorhiy Narbut's 'Family Coat of Arms of Narbut Family' uses subdued color and a flat surface plane to offer a potent, symbolic statement. I’m thinking about what it might have been like to be Narbut, creating this emblem, figuring out how to translate the values and history of a family into visual form. The black shield contrasts starkly with the muted gold background, doesn’t it? And then, the ornate flourishes around the edges give it this... weight, this sense of history. The horns, arranged like a strange, abstract flower, strike me as the core. How do you distill the essence of a lineage into such simple shapes? It reminds me of Malevich, and other artists exploring reductive forms around the same time. What does it mean to get down to the bare bones of representation? I wonder if Narbut was having a similar conversation with his own work.