Silver Filigree and Lapis Lazuli, Turbo Mamoratus Sea Shell and Stand.
c. 1680 -1720.
It is impossible to say with any certainty at this stage whether these objects originated in Europe, India or South East Asia.
Formerly with Joseph Cohen.
https://www.josephcohenantiques.com/
I suspect that they are Dutch or German.
https://archive.org/details/TreasuresSothebysJuly2018/page/n71/mode/2up?view=theater
The photographs above came from London Dealer Joseph Cohen.
I am very grateful to him for allowing me to use his photographs.
https://www.josephcohenantiques.com/
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Sotheby's Treasures Sale - 4 July 2018, Lot 11.
Stand - 32cm., 11 ¾ in. diameter
The polished Turbo Marmoratus shell with a silver-gilt frog
at the rim, filigree sleeve and screw-on detachable foot, applied with
cloisonné foliate reserves of blue
pigment, repeated at the stand on fixed foot with lotus flowers, leaves and
Ruyi border, stand with a later Dutch control mark.
Provenance - a private Dutch Collector.
Paul Micio, Filigranes d’or et d’argent du Grand Siècle, in L’object d’art 381, June 2003 pp. 66-73
The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet,
(D’Amboinsche aritkamer….Georgius Everardus Rumphius, Amsterdam, 1705),
Translated, edited, annotated and with an introduction by E.M Beekman, Yale
University Press, 1999 (for the plate of Turbo Marmoratus see Book II, Chapter
VI, pp. 100/101, Folio 70 A and B)
Karin Leonhard, ‘Shell collecting. On 17th century
Conchology, curiosity cabinets and still life paintings,’ from Karl A.E.
Enenkel and Paul J. Smith ed. Early modern zoology, The construction of animals
in science, literature and the visual arts, Leiden and Boston, 2007, p. 177 et
seq
Catalogue Note -
The appreciation of filigree in Europe took on a passionate intensity during the 17th century. Louis XIV who was mocked as The Marquis de flligrane by the Comte de Guiche (2), led the way and converted the Grand Cabinet of Louis XIII’s hunting lodge into the Cabinet de Filigrane at Versailles in 1665.
One of the features of this room was the placing together of colour with the silver thread. Lapis-blue lacquered wood furniture was overlaid with filigree ornament and fitted with Naples blue filigree-embroidered silk.
The fashion was widespread. Louis XIV inherited a considerable amount of filigree from his mother Anne (1601-1666), daughter of the king of Spain and Portugal, while his sister-in-law Margaret Therèse (1651-1673) also of Spain and Portugal brought a dowry of filigree when she married the Emperor Leopold I in 1666. This dowry is believed to have included the twelve filigree-mounted coconut cups and stands (now kept in the Treasury of the Deutchen Ordens, Vienna) which are contemporaneous with and probably from the same area of production as the shell and stand (3).
While filigree was made in Europe 4, much was imported from the East, including India, China and the wide trading area between. For example, the inventories during the life of Amalia of Solms (1602-75), wife of Frederick Henry Prince of Orange and grandmother of William III, list numerous items of Chinese and Indian silver, the latter being the more common.
However these descriptive words cannot be relied on to say where an item originated. In Amalias’s inventories the words fildegreyn or draadwerk, are rarely used, but after her death they appear, to describe items previously recorded as Indian or Chinese. In addition an item called Indian in one inventory, might become Chinese in another...’in the field of precious metal it was not always easy for the 17th century inventory compiler to see the difference between Chinese and Indian’5. The tentative conclusion drawn is that the descriptive words Chinese and Indian in such 17th century inventories, can sometimes refer to the construction technique i.e. filigree, as well as indicating a generalised area of production, somewhere in The East, not necessarily India or China.
In fact it is recognised that much 17th century filigree came to Europe as a result of the private activities of individuals connected to the Dutch United East India company (V.O.C.), whose head-quarters in the East Indies, were at Batavia, site of modern day Jakarta in Indonesia.
References to filigree in inventories taken locally in Indonesia are more specific about the area of production. Here expressions such as ‘Manila Work’ or ‘Batavian work’ are sometimes found, but the most common description is ‘West Coast filigree’, or simply ‘West Coast Work’, referring to the West Coast of Sumatra where Padang was the most significant centre of production (6).
A now
much quoted description by the English Orientalist and Secretary of the British
Admiralty, William Marsden F.R.S. (1734-1836) in his History of Sumatra in
17847 puts the importance of that large island into perspective. ‘There is no
manufacture in that part of the world; and perhaps I might be justified in
saying, in any part of the world, that has been more admired and celebrated
than the fine gold and silver filigree of Sumatra. This however is strictly
speaking, the work of the Malay and not of the original inhabitants…although..
The Chinese also make filagree, mostly of silver…’.
Sumatra has from early times been a central point in the
maritime silk-road which connected China and Japan, India, the Middle East and
Europe. Marsden also described Sumatra as the '…Emporium of eastern riches,
wither the traders of the west resorted with their cargoes to exchange them for
the precious merchandise of the Indian archipelago’.(8) .
The predominantly Chinese ornament of the shell and stand
would suggest China as the place of manufacture, but the fertility of trade and
cross cultural mixing that occurred along the maritime silk road, makes it hard
for contemporary scholars to identify for certain, where an item of filigree
originates.
For example, while a filigree box in the Rijksmuseum,
(Fig.2) which belonged to a daughter and granddaughter of successive governor
generals of the V.O.C. might be expected to originate near Batavia, it is not
proven to have been made there. The same box was recently included in an
exhibition on Chinese export silver where it is said, ‘in terms of patterns…the
filigree box mentioned above, in addition to adopting Indian Mughal or floral
patterns with central Asian (Islamic) characteristics, the techniques were
surprisingly similar to gold filigree work on ornaments made for Chinese
nobility….’ 9. The same exhibition included a casket, from the Murwen Tang
collection, catalogued ‘as early kangxi (circa 1660)’ which looks similar to
caskets catalogued as work from Padang, West Sumatra, in the exhibition, Asian
Art and Dutch Taste, (op. cit pp. 122-125).
The same pigmented appliques as are found on the shell and
stand now offered, are repeated on a box from a private collection, catalogued
as ‘West Sumatra, after a Chinese example’ (Fig.3) (Asian Art…op. cit. illus.
195 and 196). Such a Chinese example would include a box in the Imperial Palace
Museum, Beijing10. As far as can be ascertained from photographs, these two
boxes look so similar that it is difficult to understand why they should
originate from a different source.
The author of Asian Art, makes a clear distinction between
West Sumatran filigree and that produced in India and China, the former being
composed of ‘curls of thread...generally interspersed with little ovals. The arrangement
looks like a tiny plant with two leaves and a flower’, such an arrangement as
is found all over the shell and its stand. However this same arrangement of two
leaves and a flower and other detail, which suggest a manufacturing
association, are also found on an Imperial Chinese filigree silver box and
cover, Qing Dynasty, from the Roger Keverne collection, and on a Chinese gold
filigree box, from the Qing Court collection and now in the National Palace
Museum, Taipei.11
The shell and stand is applied with reserves of a blue composition, scientifically consistent with Lazurite, a mineral associated with Lapis Lazuli as a raw material and ultramarine pigments. In the 17th century Lapis Lazuli was available along the maritime silk road. At the court of the Sultan of Aceh, for example, it was used ‘in the rich caparisons of Iskandar Thani’s elephants’ and in ceremonial court accoutrements. A letter of 1639, from Iskandar Thani (1610-1641) to the Stadtholder of the United Provinces, Frederik Henry, prince of Orange (1584-1647), is illuminated on a Lapis ground.(12)
In Malacca, following its capture by the Portuguese, Afonso de Albuquerque described the richness he found as having `more gold and blue in Malacca than in the palaces of Sintra'.(13)
Another of the exotic materials coming from the east, so loved by Western collectors were its shells, which by the end of the 17th century had ‘evolved into a veritable collecting mania’.(14) This fascination, was a wide spread phenomenon in which the shell in addition to being a beautiful thing represented contemporary views on art and science. ‘Whorled gastropod shells….an allegory of the rotating universe, one that could be accommodated in a cabinet drawer’, or cabinet of curiosities….(15)
Despite being widespread, nowhere was the fascination with shells more prevalent than the United Provinces. The art dealer, Edmé François Gersaint, who sold shells as well as paintings from his shop in Paris, which was famously painted by his friend Jean-Antoine Watteau (16), recorded after a visit to the Netherlands, that ‘everyone there is curious’ (17)(Fig.4).
Among the most sort-after shells, was
the Turbo Marmoratus. Although not as frequently mounted as the Nautilus with
its simpler shape and flat surface more suitable for carving, the Turbo appears
in some of the great combinations of shell and silver of the 16th and 17th
century. It was also collected as an object in itself. The Dutch shell
collector Jan Govertz van der Aar was painted by Henrdrik Goltzius, in 1603,
contemporaneous with the founding of the Dutch East India Company (V.O.C.),
holding a Turbo Marmoratus as his prize possession (18). In Neptune and
Amphitrite, by Cornelis van Haarlem, the Sea God holds up a Turbo Marmoratus
shell showing one of its attributes the coloured mother of pearl inside (19).
Georgius Everardus Rumphius, (1627-1702) an early scientist and employee of the
V.O.C., catalogued the Turbo Marmoratus shell in his work on the fauna of
Amboyna in the Moluccas. Amboyna was site of the early head-quarters of the VOC
and centre of the trade in nutmeg, pepper, cloves and mace. He published it in
his book, the Ambonese curiosity cabinet (D’AmboinischeRaritkamer, Amsterdam,
1705, book II, Pl. 6) as Cochlea Major or in Dutch, Giant’s Ears and in Malay,
Moon’s eye after the cap which fits in the large opening and protects the
animal’s soft body. Rumphius, whose own shell collection is thought to have
been requisitioned by a Medici prince, described how to remove the outer shell
with vinegar or spoiled rice; how the flesh was a reserved delicacy of the
Kings of Buton (a large island off the south east tip of Sulawesi); how the
inner layer ‘is a beautiful mother of pearl, not white but showing all the
colours of the rainbow’; and how the Japanese smash the mother of pearl and
‘put it on big Trunks or Cabinets in order to shape flowers and stars with
them, for their black lacquer work, which renders it most handsome’.
(1) 1906-1953 Dutch duty mark for silver of unguaranteed
fineness. In practice this mark was sometimes mistakenly used on old and
foreign objects. See: Netherlands Responsibility marks since 1797, Holland
Assay office, 1997, p. 48.
Sotheby's gratefully thank, Jan van Campen, Veronica Parry and Jan Veenendaal for their help with this lot.
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The image of this box (no size given) was provided to Sotheby's by Jan Veenedaal.
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Silver Filigree Casket.
Sotheby's Lot 10 November 2021, Lot 33.
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Octagonal Casket from Zebregs Roell
H. 22 x Diam. 18 cms.
Note from Zebregs Roell.
Jan van Campen attributes the basket to Indian and Chinese
artisans working in Batavia. Jan Veenendaal (Asian Art and the Dutch Taste,
Waanders Uitgevers and Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, 2014) on the other hand argues
that this kind of silver filigree work is more likely to have been the work of
Chinese and Malay silversmiths working in West Sumatra, Padang.
However, the enamelling may have been done in Batavia. The
present basket certainly is very similar to a filigree box with green
enamelling, modelled on a Chinese example, from West Sumatra illustrated in Jan
Veenendaal’s book (ill. 195 and 196).
https://www.zebregsroell.com/indonesian-archipelago-indonesian-art-for-sale
I am very grateful to Dutch Dealers Zebregs Roell for allowing me to use their photographs and information.
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A 17th Century? Silver Filigree Mounted Nautilus Shell.
Kremlin Museum.
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