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拍品专文
This type of cup and cover known as a columbine or in German akeleiform cup derived from the columbine flower or Aquilegia vulgaris was first produced in Nuremberg in the 16th century generally with a stemmed foot and was one of three items apprentices were required to submit to qualify as a master goldsmith. The cover of the present lot, which displays visible hammer marks and is of a slight different color from the body, appears to date to an earlier period. It is a likely conclusion that Reinhold Vasters created the body to complete the cover.
REINHOLD VASTERS (1827-1909)
Reinhold Vasters was born near Aachen and entered his mark as a goldsmith in that city in 1853. He was very shortly thereafter appointed restorer at the Aachen Cathedral Treasury and his early work appears to be church silver which he marked, very straight-forwardly, R. VASTERS in a rectangular punch. By the late 1860s he seems to have worked mainly on unmarked secular pieces in the Gothic and Renaissance style which he supplied to the art dealer Frédéric Spitzer (1815-90). Vasters's work illustrates his skill in both integrating parts or fragments of authentic 16th and 17th century pieces into his creations but also creating vessels, jewels and precious items derived from Renaissance models but entirely 19th century in execution.
To create his works, Vasters certainly had access to existing objects displayed in museums or in private collections, particularly that of Spitzer who regularly commissioned him.
This cup thus resembles at least two others in museum collections: one and the closest in design, although smaller at 30 cm. and with a shorter stemmed finial, is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna illustrated in H. Kohlhaussen, Nürnberger Goldschmiedekunst des Mittelalters und der Dürerzeit. 1240 bis 1540, Berlin, 1968, p. 338 ill. 498, dated circa 1500; the other is held in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (HG 11355) also illustrated in Kohlhausen (op. cit. p. 336-337, no. 379) taller than the previous one at 36.5 cm. but with a slightly different swirling fluted stem and finial.
Undoubtedly Vasters used these examples to create our cup. Dr. Miriam Krautwurst in her dissertation on Vasters based on his designs preserved in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Ein niederrheinischer Goldschmied des 19. Jahrhunderts in der Tradition alter Meister. Sein Zeichnungkonvolut im Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Doctoral Dissertation, unpublished, dated 2003, p. 437-438) also illustrates a drawing relevant to the present cup though with feet in the shape of putti blowing a horn. This particular model was that of a cup and cover sold in the Frederick Spitzer collection in the Anderson Galleries, New York, 9-12 January 1929, lot 587.
It is also interesting to note that the collection of Carl Mayer von Rothschild, Frankfurt sold at the Galerie George Petit in Paris in 1911 comprised under lot 3 ('Orfèvrerie Allemande', Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1911, p. 8) a cup of near identical design with bear-like feet but with the same finial as the cup in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum example leading to conclude that Vasters probably created several versions to supply a demand for this type of gothic cups.
REINHOLD VASTERS (1827-1909)
Reinhold Vasters was born near Aachen and entered his mark as a goldsmith in that city in 1853. He was very shortly thereafter appointed restorer at the Aachen Cathedral Treasury and his early work appears to be church silver which he marked, very straight-forwardly, R. VASTERS in a rectangular punch. By the late 1860s he seems to have worked mainly on unmarked secular pieces in the Gothic and Renaissance style which he supplied to the art dealer Frédéric Spitzer (1815-90). Vasters's work illustrates his skill in both integrating parts or fragments of authentic 16th and 17th century pieces into his creations but also creating vessels, jewels and precious items derived from Renaissance models but entirely 19th century in execution.
To create his works, Vasters certainly had access to existing objects displayed in museums or in private collections, particularly that of Spitzer who regularly commissioned him.
This cup thus resembles at least two others in museum collections: one and the closest in design, although smaller at 30 cm. and with a shorter stemmed finial, is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna illustrated in H. Kohlhaussen, Nürnberger Goldschmiedekunst des Mittelalters und der Dürerzeit. 1240 bis 1540, Berlin, 1968, p. 338 ill. 498, dated circa 1500; the other is held in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (HG 11355) also illustrated in Kohlhausen (op. cit. p. 336-337, no. 379) taller than the previous one at 36.5 cm. but with a slightly different swirling fluted stem and finial.
Undoubtedly Vasters used these examples to create our cup. Dr. Miriam Krautwurst in her dissertation on Vasters based on his designs preserved in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Ein niederrheinischer Goldschmied des 19. Jahrhunderts in der Tradition alter Meister. Sein Zeichnungkonvolut im Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Doctoral Dissertation, unpublished, dated 2003, p. 437-438) also illustrates a drawing relevant to the present cup though with feet in the shape of putti blowing a horn. This particular model was that of a cup and cover sold in the Frederick Spitzer collection in the Anderson Galleries, New York, 9-12 January 1929, lot 587.
It is also interesting to note that the collection of Carl Mayer von Rothschild, Frankfurt sold at the Galerie George Petit in Paris in 1911 comprised under lot 3 ('Orfèvrerie Allemande', Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1911, p. 8) a cup of near identical design with bear-like feet but with the same finial as the cup in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum example leading to conclude that Vasters probably created several versions to supply a demand for this type of gothic cups.