Salzburg Cathedral Silver Gilt and Silver Filigree Crozier.
Early 18th Century.
No size given.
http://www.kulturpool.at/plugins/kulturpool/showitem.action?itemId=124554855452&kupoContext=default
Friday, 26 May 2023
Thursday, 25 May 2023
Two 18th Century Silver Gilt and Silver Filigree Chalices.
1. Archbishop Franz Ferdinand Khünburg's Chalice. 1716.
Here attributed to Leonard Maier.
The more I investigate Italian Filigree, the more complex it becomes to identify.
Something of a minefield.
Silver Gilt, Silver
Filigree, Enamel and Garnets.
Note the granulated bosses as on the book covers below.
.................................
Another object which displays similar techniques is a book cover by Leonard Maier of Nuremberg of 1695.
Germanisches Nationalmuseum
and below a book offered for sale by Messrs Venator Hanstein of Koln, Germany
Lot March 2008
http://www.kunstmarkt.com/pagesprz/kunst_kalender/_d142702-/show_praesenz.html?words=
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Kremlin Museums Book Cover Silver Filigree
From the Bridgman Photo Library.
Despite the low resolution it is plain to see that this book cover was made in the same atalier as the two book covers above.
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The workmanship and Filigree techniques of this chalice have distinct similarities with later South German work, Nuremberg or Schwabisch Gmund particularly the Boullework and Filigree Toilet Mirror dated to around 1750 (image below) - the Boullework is possibly Munich. The enamel on the chalice is also possibly from Schwabisch Gmund.
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Calice del Seminario Vescovile.
18th Century Silver Gilt and Silver Filigree Chalice.
Museo Clemente Rospigliosi.
Via Ripa del Sale, 3, 51100 Pistoia PT, Italy.
Height 26.5 cms.
https://musei.diocesipistoia.it/index.php/it/calici/56-115-calice-del-seminario-vescovile
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Ferdinand Eusebio Miseroni in the Kunsthistorische Museum, Vienna.
Ferdinand Eusebio Miseroni.
Hardstone Silver, Silver Filigree.
1678.
in the Kunsthistorische Museum, Vienna.
Ferdinand Eusebio Miseroni (1639 Prague - 1684 Prague)
Ground bean jasper, yellow (from Kandern, Southern Black Forest);
Frame: silver, partially painted, garnet; Flowers: agate, amber
jasper, amethyst, chalcedony; Stem and leaves: painted silver.
H. 37,7 cm (without flowers 19,5 cm), B. 18,8 cm, T. 7,5 cm
https://www.khm.at/en/objectdb/detail/88069/?offset=50&lv=list
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Ferdinand Eusebio Miseroni (1639 Prague - 1684 Prague).
Pisolitic (“bean-ore”) jasper, partially painted silver,
garnets, agate, amethyst, chalcedony
H. 36,7 cm (with flowers), B. 19 cm H. 19,5 cm (without flowers), B. 19 cms.
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Details as above
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I suspect the frame in the Grunes Gewolbe is related to these objects.
The combination of the hardstone decorative elements and silver filigree is very unusual.
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Tuesday, 23 May 2023
Filigree Mounted Coconuts.
17th/ 18th Century Filigree Mounted Coconuts.
Previously with London Dealer Michael Backman.
(Post in preparation).
Height: 10.1cm, width: 12cms.
Description from the website of Michael Backman.
This cup of polished coconut shell set with file, silver filigree mounts was made for the Portuguese/Spanish market in the 17th century. Precisely where such cups were made is variously given as either Goa in India, West Sumatra or the Philippines.
Occasionally, colonial South America is also
mentioned but probably that is because similar cups have been found there
leading to the assumption that they must have thus been made there, when in
fact their movement around the world in the 17th century was very much a
product of the Spanish Galleon trade. The precise origins of these cups was no
doubt obscured by trans-shipping at the time. Also, it is possible that they
were made in several locations concurrently.
The cup has a fine, flared foot composed entirely of silver
filigree. There are two handles on each side. These are of thicker silver wires
infilled with finer silver filigree work. And there are the silver filigree
panels that adorn the sides of the coconut. These are attached to the nut by
means of small silver pins.
Cups such as these appear in several important museum
collections around the world. Four are in the Hermitage in St Petersburg and
are illustrated in Piotrovsky (2006, p. 22) and are given dates of 1600-1650
with a possible provenance to Goa. A set of twelve related cups are in Vienna’s
Kunsthistorisches Museum. Another related cup with a lid and tray is
illustrated in Seipal (2000, p. 206) where it is ascribed to 17th century Goa
and also in Veenendaal (2014, p. 128) where it ascribed to West Sumatra, circa
1700. Miguel Crespo (2019, p. 342) illustrates a related pair with lids but no
handles and attributes them to 17th century Philippines.
Moura Carvalho (2008, p. 50) illustrates a related cup made
with a moulded gourd with similar silver filigree mounts, attributed to early
17th century Goa (probably).
Related filigree work appears on some communion chalices in
Guatemala and Mexico (see Esteras Martin, 1994, p. 100, and Palomero Paramo,
1992, p. 34 for examples) and these have been attributed to 17th century Mexico
and Guatemala but probably it is more likely that these items were trade pieces
and have their origins in Asia. Another intriguing possibility – and this might
be the case with the cup here too – is that these filigree items were made in
what is now Mexico (then known as Nueva España) in the early 17th century by
Chinese silversmiths who had left Manila in the wake of anti-Chinese massacres
there and resettled in Spain’s colonies in central America. Large numbers of
slaves and indentured labourers also were taken from Southeast Asia on the
so-called Manila Run to what is now Mexico. Many were of Chinese descents and
locally became known as chinos. It is quite possible that some of these also
were involved in silversmithing and so Southeast Asian Chinese silversmithing
techniques were used concurrently in Manila and elsewhere in Southeast Asia as
well as in Nueva España.
REFERENCES
Corrigan, K., J. van Campen, & F. Diercks (eds.), Asian
in Amsterdam: The Culture of Luxury in the Golden Age, Peabody Essex
Museum/Rijksmuseum, 2015.
Jordan, A. et al, The Heritage of Rauluchantim, Museu de Sao Roque, 1996.
Jordan-Gschwend, A., & K.J.P. Lowe (eds.), The Global City: On the Streets of Renaissance Lisbon, Paul Holberton Publishing, 2015.
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I am grateful to Michael Backman for permission to use his photographs.
Tuesday, 16 May 2023
18th Century Italian or German Silver Filigree Frame with a Devotional Inset.
5.5 x 7.6 cm (frame) and 1.8 x 2.4 (medallion).
Sold by Auctioneers Cambi 18th November 2015 - Lot 107.
https://www.cambiaste.com/uk/auction-0244/medaglione-devozionale-con-crocifissione-argen-140493
The Cambi di Aste website published a fairly in depth essay on the subject and is repeated here with a google translation and slightly edited by me.
This fine medallion with a silver filigree frame features a
rich interweaving of plant motifs from which various inflorescences in relief
with stamens and grains bloom and ends at the bottom with a large tulip with a
strong symbolic value. The rich frame follows almost slavishly that of the
devotional medallion in a private collection in Palermo, referred to by Maria
Concetta Di Natale as Sicilian workers from the second half of the 17th
century.
The work shows in the center two painted enamels depicting
the Madonna della Lettera and San Domenico probably produced in Messina due to
the type of enamels and the inclusion of the Virgin venerated in the city of
the Strait (MC Di Natale, entry 1.28, in Ori e silverware of Sicily from the
fifteenth to the eighteenth century, exhibition catalog edited by MC Di Natale,
Milan 1989, p. 97-99).
Stylistic affinities can also be found with the almost
contemporary devotional medallion with the Holy Family from the Volpe
Collection in Rome, also by Sicilian craftsmen (MC Di Natale - G. Volpe, file
1,27, in Ori e argenti. . ., 1989, pp. 97-98).
Among the innumerable filigree works created by the skilled
Sicilian artists, the chalice of the Cathedral of Cefalù of 1703 should also be
included (M. Accascina, I marchi delle argenterie e oreficerie siciliane, Busto
Arsizio 1976, p. 105; C. Guastella, La suppellettile and movable furniture, in
Materials for historical knowledge and the restoration of a cathedral.
Exhibition of documents and figurative testimonies of the Ruggerian basilica of
Cefalù, Palermo 1982, p. 153) and another similar example from the Cathedral of
Gerace, dated 1726 , commissioned by Bishop Diez De Aux, whose coat of arms is
placed at the base of the artifact (MT Sorrenti, in Arte e fede a Gerace, 12-20
century: short guide to the exhibition, edited by M. Cagliostro-MT. Sorrenti,
Rome 1996, pp. 12, 16).
The ornaments of the work in question also recall those of
the chalice of the church of S. Chiara di Matera made in 1702, whose author,
due to the presence of the hallmark in the filigree structure, has been
identified by Claudia Guastella as the Palermo silversmith Gaetano Nicodemi ,
probably specialized in this process (C. Guastella, in Goldsmiths and clients
in the Caltanissetta area, exhibition catalog edited by C. Guastella, in press.
For the work, see also E. Catello, Un grande patrimony of silver antiquities,
in Argenti in Basilicata, exhibition catalog edited by S. Abita, Salerno 1994,
pp. 152-153).
A skilled silversmith from Messina, instead, he executed the
filigree chalice of the church of Santa Maria La Nova in Scicli (RG), a work of
1706 (G. Musolino, file 148, in Il Tesoro dell'Isola. Sicilian masterpieces in
silver and coral from the 15th to the 18th century, exhibition catalog edited
by S. Rizzo, Catania 2008, pp. 922-923). Precisely this work is the one that
comes closest to the artefact in terms of type of workmanship and decoration _
allowing us to hypothesize, even in the absence of trademarks, that the Rimini
watermark comice was also created by an equally skilled artist of the Strait
area.
In fact, the Scicli goblet proposes similar phytomorphic and
floral motifs with beaded stamens and grains that demarcate and conclude the
various parts of the work. With the interweaving of thin silver threads, the
Sicilian silversmiths also created a whole series of small artifacts "in
which the reduction to miniature is operated by imitating object typologies taken
from cabinet-making (chairs, tables, beds, sedan chairs, chandeliers), from
silverware, from the art of majolica or woven wicker (reliquaries, vases with
branches, cake stands, trays, baskets)” and “from everyday life (warmers,
braziers, carriages)” (S. Grasso, Le filigrane, in Wunderkammer siciliana to
the origins of the lost museum, exhibition catalog edited by V. Abbate, Naples
2001, p. 263). This typology includes some filigree objects from the Regional
Gallery of Sicily in Palazzo Abatellis, including a canopy bed, a riser, a
brazier and many others made in Sicily between the end of the 17th and the
mid-18th century (cf. S. Grasso, files II.98 - II.113, in Wunderkammer. . .,
2001, 2001, pp. 265-271 ) and also various contemporary filigree miniatures of
Sicilian derivation also from the Rimini Collection, such as the vases with
branches with the body in amber.
If the use of the watermark is documented in Messina by
various punches affixed especially during the eighteenth century, its
processing, as already mentioned, is also attested in Palermo between the end
of the seventeenth century and the mid-eighteenth century both by the discovery
of the chapters of the maestranza (S. Barraja, The maestranza degli orofi e
argentieri di Palermo, in Ori e argenti..., 1989, p. 372; Idem, The brands of
the silversmiths and goldsmiths of Palermo from the seventeenth century to
today, Milan 1996, p . 49) and from the retrieval of archival documents and a
few trademarks found (MC Di Natale, file no. 114, in Splendori di Sicilia.
Decorative arts from the Renaissance to the Baroque, exhibition catalog edited
by MC Di Natale, Milan 2001, p 434)
The frame of the Maranghi Collection incorporates a
medallion not pertinent to the rest of the work, according to the custom of
collectors of the past who sometimes tended to update the works according to
new fashions or redo parts that have been damaged over time. It could have been
a cameo, of which the background on which the ivory micro-sculptures were
placed has probably been lost, passed through the Messina antiques market and
readapted inside the rock crystal case.
The technique used for the Crucifixion group, of refined
workmanship, crowded with figures, which presents, among other things, the
Madonna, Saint John the Evangelist, the Magdalene and a soldier on horseback,
ascribes the artefact to the Nordic area, probably executed between the end of
the 16th and early 17th centuries, the golden age of the Wunderkammern. This
creation brings to mind the pendants with verre églomisé, still kept in
Sicilian treasures, such as that of the Pepoli Museum in Trapani with Agnus Dei
on one side and Crucifixion on the other, doubtfully ascribed to a Sicilian
goldsmith of the first half of the 17th century. whose scenes are executed in
relief perhaps in painted wax (MC Di Natale, The jewels of the Madonna of
Trapani, in Ori e argenti..., 1989, p. 79).
Rock crystal, like coral, is attributed an apotropaic value against fascination (P. Castelli, The virtues of gems, their symbolic and astrological meaning in the humanistic culture and popular beliefs of the fifteenth century. The recovery of ancient gems, in L goldsmith's art in fifteenth-century Florence, exhibition catalog edited by MG Ciardi Drupè dal Poggetto, Florence 1977, pp. 309-363).
Its processing on the island, already
attested in the Arab and Norman tradition (M. Accascina, Oreficeria. 1974, p.
262), is documented in the 16th century, from what can be deduced from the 1573
inventory of the goldsmith Russitto, which lists “a piece of rustic crystal”,
unworked, together with other works in rock crystal (G. Gardella, La “Heredita
del quondam Pietrb'Rosfltto”l57î Inventdifin for the public sale of jewels and
workshop utensils that belonged to a rich manufacturer of silverware in Palermo
and names of the buyers, Palermo 2000).
In the first decades of the seventeenth century, however,
the Lombard goldsmith Marzio Cazzola distinguished himself in Sicily for the
working of rock crystal (see MC Di Natale, A Lombard goldsmith in Palermo:
Marzio Cazzola, in Itinerari d'arte in Sicily, edited by G. Barbera and MC Di
Natale, [Naples] 2012, pp. 106-110, which contains an extensive bibliography;
Eadem, in L. Sarullo, Dictionary of Sicilian artists, vol. IV, Applied Arts,
edited by MC. Di Natale, in press, ad vocem) and the silversmith Michele Ricca
(MC. Di Natale, in L. Sarullo, Dizionario. . ., vol. IV, in press, ad vocem,
with previous bibliography). Rosalia Margiotta
Friday, 12 May 2023
Silver Filigree Pomander?
Cuttack or Karimnager?
Science Museum.
Sir Henry Wellcome Collection
No size given.
Science Museum Group © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum
https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co133124/silver-pomander-pomander
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_____________________
The Metropolitan Museum New York, Silver Filigree Pan Box.
19th Century?
5.7 x 8.6 x 8.9 cms.
The Met are non committal suggesting 19th Century India.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/140003936?pg=3&rpp=20&ft=boxes&pos=59
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British Museum Filigree Spice Box
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Diam 8.5 cms.
An inscription under the base records that this was a gift
from Mrs B Moss to the Plymouth Dock prayer room, and was later presented to
Plymouth synagogue in 1844.
Sale 16884, Bonhams, London 25th November 2009, The Plymouth
Synagogue Silver, Lot.303
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_2010-8002-3
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Thursday, 11 May 2023
Two Related Caskets with Enamel Plaques
Two related 18th /19th Century Silver Filigree Caskets.
with Enamel and Glass Insets.
Possibly South German / North Italian.
As yet the origin of these objects isn't clear to me - the filigree work and small enamel panels could easily be South German (Schwabisch Gmund?).
.........................
I am including images and details of two, perhaps related Italian devotional objects. These framed pieces appear to be comparatively common in Italy - Crucifix and Rosary beads are common in in South Germany.
The study of silver filigree folk jewellery and small devotional objects is a rabbit hole to disappear down which I will leave to others!
Were the enamel panels imported from South Germany? Were they made in Italy?
North Italian /South German, Schwabish Gmund?
17 x 14 x 11 cms.
For Sale with Auctioneers Colasanti, Rome, 15 December 2021.
With English Auctioneers Burstow and Hewett, Lot 213, 22 March 2022.
...............................
`
15 x 11 x 7 cms.
Sold at Messrs Cambi, Lot 244, 18 Nov. 2015.
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6.7 cms.
Venus and Adonis.
Lot 310.
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18th/19th Century Italian Silver Filigree Frame.
with Enamel panels.
Size 25.5 x 16 cms.
18th Century Filigree Silver Frame with Enamel and Glass
For sale with Finarte Rome and Milan, Lot 58, 25 May 2023
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Enamel Miniature Madonna and Child with Angels.
in an18th/19th Century Italian Silver Filigree Frame.
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Height 11.3 cm x 11.2cms.
Silver Filigree, Enamel with Coral Beads.
For sale with Finarte Rome and Milan, Lot 45, 25 May 2023.
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