Sculptor, designer, printmaker, and illustrator Ignatius "Ignaz" Taschner was born in Germany in 1871, the son of stonemason Bartholomew Traschner. From 1885 to 1888 he took as position as apprentice stonemason to sculptor Wilhelm Kampf, followed by a year as a journeyman, before beginning his formal art education. He enrolled at Munich Academy of Fine Arts in 1889 where he studied sculpture, painting, and printmaking. Among his teachers were Syrius Eberle and Jakob Bradl.

The year before his graduation in 1895 he recieved his first sculptural commission from the city of Schweinfurt for a war memorial, and soon thereafter had steady employment by German municipalities to design memorials, decorative relief murals, fountains, and tombs, including the crypt of artist Carl Bennewitz von Loefen. In addition to his stonework he was also an illustrator for the publisher Martin Gerlach, and also took commissions for etching illustrations from a variety of authors to illustrate works such as the Brothers Grimm series and Tolstoy. In 1903 he was employed at the Royal Arts and Crafts School in Breslau as a lecturer and metalsmith with a focus on jewelry; among his students were sculptor Georg Wrba and artist Josef Rauch.

In 1904 Taschner was employed by the Berlin architectural firms of Alfred Messel and Ludwig Hoffman to design the decorative work, as well as bronze stauary, for their projects, affording him the ability to begin building a villa of his own design in Mittendorf in 1906, a project that would not be completed until 1911. However, his time at the villa was short lived, as Taschner died in 1913 of a heart attack.