Lot 131 | Norddeutschland oder Baltikum | LARGE SILVER LIDDED TANKARD WITH FINELY ENGRAVED COSTUME FIGURES AND ALLIANCE COAT OF ARMS

LARGE SILVER LIDDED TANKARD WITH FINELY ENGRAVED COSTUME FIGURES AND ALLIANCE COAT OF ARMS.

Northern Germany or Baltic States.
Date: Ca. 1650.
Technique: Silver with inner- and partial gilding.
Description: On a convex base ring with a double-moulded rim, the wide, cylindrical body with a hinged
lid. The handle figuratively designed with a female nude, the handle with shell
decoration. The wall with cartilage relief on all sides, partly with grimace-like
elements, on a hallmarked ground. Three large, high-oval reserves with finely engraved
costume figures on the side. The large-figure depictions are each standing in front of
distant landscape backdrops. One is a veiled lady with a fan, then a cavalier with his
left arm outstretched and then a medallion with an elegant cavalier with his right arm
bent. On the top a large alliance coat of arms under a crest with the monograms
'H.W.A.D.V.T'.
Weight: Ca. 1600g.
Measurement: Height 22cm.
Mark: On foot rim indistinct inspection mark, maker's mark 'SS'.


Provenance:
Estate of Wilhelm Zersch, former tenant of the Fürstliche Brauerei Bad Köstritz.

Literature:
- Leistikow, Annelore: Baltisches Silber, Lüneburg 1996.
Listed and illustrated here are several engraved figures on lidded tankards from the workshop of the Revaler Meister Stanislaus Schultze p.144, no.243/244.
- Hermarck, Carl: Die Kunst der europäischen Gold- und Silberschmiede von 1450 bis 1830, Munich 1978.
A comparable lidded tankard with engraved costume figures and cartouche work by the Hamburg master Steffen Sömmering, dated around 1650, illustrated no.216.
- Schliemann, Erich (ed.): Die Goldschmiede Hamburgs, Hamburg 1985, vol.II. A tankard with comparable engraved figures by the Hamburg master Hermann Lambrecht listed p.134, no.2, illus. vol.III no.251.

In addition to the imaginative relief structures in cartilage style, it is of course the large engraved cartouches on the present tankard that catch the eye in terms of their outstanding quality. These figures in the costumes of their time were usually modelled on copperplate engravings or etchings, such as those by Salomon Savery (1594-1683) after Pieter Jansz. Quast (1605-1647).