Dr. Adriano Aymonino

The Musaeum created by the 1st Duchess of Northumberland at Northumberland House between the 1750s and the 1780s was one of the largest collections ever assembled in Georgian London. A whole floor was devoted to its display and a handwritten nine-volume catalogue was produced to keep record of its holdings and classify its contents. Encompassing all sorts of natural and man-made objects, the Duchess’ Musaeum was explicitly modelled on the recently founded British Museum, while at the same time retaining elements of the previous “cabinet” tradition. This lecture will focus on the tension between “curiosity” and “Enlightenment” apparent in the Duchess’ Musaeum and in several other contemporary similar collections, discussing issues of taxonomy, global sources, and arrangement.

Image: Chinese-English dictionary, c.1750, pencil, pen, watercolour and body colour on paper, Collection of the Duke of Northumberland, Alnwick Castle (DNP MS 779) 

Dr Tobias Capwell

Armour was both equipment for fighting and expressive art of great power. By the sixteenth century, the art of the armourer in southern Germany had attained unrivalled technical sophistication, artistic conception, and decorative richness.

The centre of the German Renaissance armour world was Augsburg, whose community of virtuoso armourers were led by the Helmschmid family – several of whose members are counted amongst the greatest ever masters of their art.

Most notably, Lorenz Helmschmid and his son Kolman served as court armourers to the German Emperor Maximilian I, with Kolman succeeding as master after his father’s death and going on, with his son Desiderius, to create armour masterpieces for the Emperor Charles V and Prince Philip of Spain, amongst many other important clients.

In this talk we encounter the outstanding creations of these extraordinary sculptors in metal, and consider their significance to the wider artistic culture of their time, and beyond.

Image: Detail of an armet for the tourney, made by Kolman Helmschmid, Augsburg, c. 1501-15. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. no. 29.150.6a, b.

Elisabetta Dal Carlo

“La porcelaine de Venise surpasse de beaucoup celle de Dresden”. With these words the Venetian Abbot Antonio Conti describes the Vezzi manufacture in a 1727 letter to Madame de Caylus, one of the protagonists of Parisian cultural life.

More than three hundred years after its foundation, I will pay tribute to the Vezzi factory, the oldest in Italy and the third in Europe to produce porcelain. Its artefacts accompanied the daily rituals of patricians, as can be seen in the paintings of the time, especially in Longhi's and Guardi's canvases. Vezzi's porcelains are among the objects that best capture the spirit and aesthetics of 18th century Venetian nobility.

The manufacture of Giovanni Vezzi was only active for seven years, from 1720 to 1727, during which it achieved extraordinary technical skill in the production of porcelain. Thanks to the protectionist policies in Venice, the ceramists reached an excellent level of quality: their works, characterised by extraordinary shapes, mostly taken from silverware, spread throughout Europe.

During its active years, few artefacts have been produced and even fewer remain: famous masterpieces, such as the Vase from the Querini Stampalia Museum, are porcelains of pure beauty that entrust their charm to form and colour.

Image: Vase, Venice, Vezzi manufactory, porcelain, c.1727 Copyright  Venice, Querini Stampalia Foundation

Caroline de Guitaut, Surveyor of The King’s Works of Art

This paper will explore the rich holdings of works by the Russian goldsmith and jeweller Carl Fabergé (1846-1920) in the British Royal Collection. Formed by six successive generations of the Royal Family, the collection represents the finest and most historically important assemblage of Fabergé in the world. The collection is remarkably diverse containing examples of every type of objet de vertu created by the Fabergé firm, from jewelled Imperial Easter Eggs, carved hardstone animals, gold and diamond snuffboxes to a vast array of decorative pieces incorporating the virtuoso techniques for which the firm was renowned. In preparation for a forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the collection, new research has shed light on the history and provenance of several important pieces which will be referenced in this presentation.

Image: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2024

Dr Jorgen Hein

The Danish Coronation Regalia date from the Renaissance (the Sword of State from 1551) via Mannerism (the crown of Christian IV from 1596) into the Baroque (the crown of Christian V from 1671). When they were made, the Danish king also reigned over Norway and parts of Southern Sweden. Moreover, he had the income from the Sound duties which every merchant ship entering the Baltic had to pay at Elsinore. Yet, for long the king had to share power with the aristocracy and not until 1660 – coinciding with a defeat to Sweden – was absolutism introduced. This course of events is mirrored in the form and decoration of the Regalia as each singular piece served as symbolic embodiment of the power and might of Royal Majesty. A mixture of exquisite craftsmanship and political propaganda of European significance, is the crown of Christian IV, the brother of Anne of Denmark.

Image: Crown made in Copenhagen for the coronation of Christian IV in 1596. Gold, enamel, diamonds, pearls. H. 17.8, Diam. 20.8 cm.

Rose Kerr

Ceramics made for the Imperial court have always been highly valued in China. Among them are several types that are considered especially rare and precious. They were made between the tenth and eighteenth centuries, and some have mysterious origins. The lecture will describe these wares, their origins and manufacture, their particular allure, and the stupendous prices paid for examples in recent years. We will range from the Song dynasty when imperial Ru and Guan wares were made, through the Yuan dynasty when an imperial kiln depot was established at Jingdezhen for the first time. During the Ming dynasty imperial porcelain-making burgeoned, including ceramics such as the late 15th century “chicken cups” that are now hugely valued by collectors. During the Qing dynasty skill in manufacture grew to the point that vases with revolving central sections were created, artefacts that now command astonishing prices.

Image: Chicken Cup in the Percival David Foundation, similar to one sold for HK$ 36 million.

Professor Timothy Wilson

The pottery known by the name of “Saint-Porchaire”, a village in western-central France, is one of the rarest of all types of Renaissance ceramics, under eighty intact examples being known. It has also long been one of the most contested, to a point where serious scholars have argued that there are no genuinely Renaissance examples; there is indeed nothing resembling it in appearance or technique in other sixteenth-century ceramics. In the later nineteenth century, so insoluble did the problems seem that it was called le sphinx de la curiosité, the ultimate riddle in art collecting. Despite or perhaps because of this, nineteenth-century French, British, and later American collectors (notably John Pierpont Morgan) paid extraordinary prices to obtain examples.

The lecture will discuss the debate about this pottery and how modern scientific and archaeological work has thrown light on some, but not all, of the problems.

Image: “Saint-Porchaire” ewer. National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh.

Dr. Paulus Rainer

Emperor Rudolf II's Kunstkammer, his collection of extraordinary works of art, nature and science, was considered legendary during his lifetime. However, hardly anyone knew it from personal experience, as access to it was extremely restrictive. This lecture aims to provide a brief insight into this mysterious collection, focusing on one aspect in particular that was of specific interest to the emperor - precious stones. In them he recognized “the beauty of the whole world”, as Anselmus Boëtius de Boodt (1550-1632) wrote, and through them the Majestas, the dignity due to the emperor, could be expressed and illustrated. Using examples from the Kunstkammer of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, the emperors Kunstkammer should be experienced as a place of wonder, knowledge and insight – at least in facets.

Image: Lidded Prase Vessel; Ottavio Miseroni (1567 – 1624) and Jan Vermeyen (before 1559 – 1608); Prague, ca. 1600 / 05; Prase, heliotrope, gold, enamel, garnets, citrine, amethyst, hyacinth; Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Kunstkammer, Inv.-No. KK 1918; © KHM-Museumsverband

Karolin Randhahn

In January 2024, The Royal Dresden Porcelain Collection platform launched after nearly 10 years of work at the Porzellansammlung (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden). The digital publication presents 8,200 extant objects of the royal East Asian ceramics collection of Augustus the Strong (1670–1733) and Augustus III (1696–1763) in conjunction with its archival material for the very first time.

The Royal Dresden Porcelain Collection is tailored to the unique strength and interest of the Porzellansammlung’s unique reference collection. It presents a scholarly publication and four specially conceived catalogues around the Japanese Palace Inventories that provide unique insight into the historical context. In innovative ways, the digital platform utilizes and links both artifacts and documents, to not just present research but to initiate and enable further questioning. Carefully curated, this showcased material opens new avenues into the research and understanding of East Asian porcelain and its reception in Europe during the Baroque era.

https://royalporcelaincollection.skd.museum/

Image: Homepage of the The Royal Dresden Porcelain Collection. © Porzellansammlung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

Dr Timothy Schroder, DLITT, FSA

Gold and silver have always played a role in church ritual and ceremony, though at some times more conspicuously than at others. In medieval and Renaissance Europe, when ‘princes of the church’ were as powerful, almost, as secular rulers, gold was used for sacred ornaments to reflect the church's wealth and status. But there was a theology of gold too, highlighted in the great debate between Abbot Suger of St Denis and St Bernard of Clairvaux, with Suger arguing that gold reflected the glory and perfection of God, while Bernard held the other view, that precious metal locked up valuable resources that should be used to relieve the poor and promote God’s work. The argument has rumbled on ever since.

Image: From the Hallesches Heiltumbuch of the jewelled gold chalice of Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, c. 1523, Hofbibliothek Afschaffenburg.

Dr Dora Thornton

In 2022, the Goldsmiths’ Company commissioned a cup to be known as The Coronation Cup of His Majesty King Charles III. It is one of the Company’s most significant commissions in living memory. This follows in the tradition of the cups commissioned for the coronations of George VI and Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, both of which are in the Company’s Collection. The association with Coronation cups goes back much earlier, however, and one of its great treasures is the Bowes Cup, given by Sir Martin Bowes in 1561 and by tradition used by Queen Elizabeth I at her coronation banquet in 1558. That, too, is part of a longer story, as the Goldsmiths’ Company has supported excellence, craftsmanship, community and skill in its related trades ever since it received its first royal Charter in 1327. Its pioneering support for contemporary makers continues to promote the best in British designer silversmithing as it approaches its 700th anniversary in 2027. A major element in this is through its commissions for the Company’s remarkable Collection, which promote excellence and innovation in precious metal.

Dr Dora Thornton, Goldsmiths’ Company Curator, presents The Coronation Cup of His Majesty King Charles III as a contemporary masterpiece of precision, artistry and imagination, and explains how it speaks to this living tradition.

Image: Coronation Cup of His Majesty King Charles III, 2023, by Clive Burr and Jane Short. Silver, gold, and enamel. Collection: The Goldsmiths’ Company. Photography: Richard Valencia.

Dr Julia Weber

The menagerie of predominantly life-size porcelain animal sculptures is one of the outstanding pioneering achievements of the Meissen porcelain manufactory - and one of the absolute highlights and visitor favourites of the Dresden Porcelain Collection. They continue to amaze us to this day, and not just because of their mastery of the medium’s technical demands. Even contemporaries admired Johann Joachim Kaendler’s special talent for capturing the particular qualities and characters of animals and for making them come alive with a remarkable sense of movement in the ultimately hard and rigid material of porcelain. The lecture will explore what these unique sculptures can tell us about the perception of animals at a time, when natural scientists and philosophers discussed whether animals possessed consciousness like humans or indeed even souls.

Image: Greyhound and Bulldog in battle, Meissen, 1731, © Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Porzellansammlung, photo: Adrian Sauer

Dr Dedo von Kerssenbrock-Krosigk

Fragile, emerging from the “dirt” of sand and ashes, and often made very quickly: glass seems to qualify as the opposite of preciousness. Moreover, having been used since about 1500 BC for imitating precious stones, it attained a poor and lasting reputation as a cheap ersatz. The aim of this presentation is to show the other side of this highly ambivalent material. To this day, the making of glass remains a challenging technological accomplishment that competes with nature, and its proverbial brittleness as well as its useful properties have made it at times a particularly conspicuous expression of luxury. Exploring the splendour of glass with a limited number of spotlights through the ages allows for close, if narrow views into the changes of mentalities and perceptions.

Image: Ribbed “calcedonio” pitcher with silver-gilt mounts, Murano, Venice, ca. 1480‒1520, 36,2 × 14,2 × 12,9 cm, acquired from the collection of the Altgraves and Princes of Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck in Dyck castle; Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (P 1992-23), photo: Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf.

Eva Wollschläger M.A.

Over a period of more than 150 years, the Royal Porcelain Manufactory Berlin (KPM) has collected various materials, objects and works of art in order to use them as a source of inspiration for its own artistic production. Today, the manufactory's art and study collections comprise over 46 000 items.

During the 2nd World War the collections suffered heavy losses. Among other things, almost all the inventory books of the manufactory collections were lost and with them the key to their acquisition. Today the utility of some collections‘ items is still mysterious. Why, for example, did KPM purchase fan leaves in Rome around 1790? What purpose did they serve in the manufactory production? Using three key objects the lecture will solve some puzzles and explain the often curious connections between purchased study objects and KPM's artistic production.

Image: Neoclassical fan-leaf with the temple of Saturn, Rome, ca. 1788, © SPSG, KPM-Archiv (Land Berlin)