APPARENTLY UNMARKED, EXCEPT FOR AUSTRIAN CONTROL MARK

Details

A GERMAN PARCEL-GILT MODEL OF AN OSTRICH
Apparently unmarked, except for Austrian control mark
The two-tier branch-work base enclosing elaborate scrolling foliage, flower-heads and artichokes, the lower tier with swirling scroll support centred on the underside by an enamelled coat-of-arms, the upper tier with further applied foliage and a miniature fox (now detached) and wild boar, the ostrich with realistically chased feathers and collar around his neck suspending a drop pearl, the base with traces of a defaced nineteenth-century Austrian import mark
10¼ in. (26 cm.) high
Gross weight 24 oz. (774 gr.)

Provenance

Sir Julius Wernher, 1st Bt. (1850-1912), Bath House, London, by whom bequeathed, with a life interest to his widow, Alice, Lady Wernher, subsequently Lady Ludlow (1862-1945), to their son
Sir Harold Wernher, 3rd Bt., G.C.V.O. (1893-1973), Bath House, London, and from 1948, Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire, and by descent.

Literature

Burlington Fine Arts Club, Exhibition of Early German Art, London, 1906, case A, no. 1, where it is stated that the base was applied with a third animal, a dog, which is now missing.
1913 Bath House Inventory, p. 134, no. 665, in the safe, describing the animals at the base as 'two hounds and a pig [crossed out and amended to boar]'.
1914 Wernher Inventory, p. 90, no. 447, describing the animals at the base as 'two hounds and a boar'.

Exhibited

London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, Exhibition of Early German Art, 1906.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

The model of the ostrich is similar to the support of a magnificent silver-gilt ostrich egg cup by Clement Kicklinger, Augsburg, circa 1570-75, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. 897) (illustrated in H. Seling, Die Kunst Der Augsburger Goldschmiede 1529-1868, Munich, 1980, III, fig. 100).

A second cup of very similar form, and indeed perhaps based on the Vienna cup, formerly belonged to Frederic Spitzer and was sold as part of his collection in Paris in 1893 (lot 1708). While metal analysis of the flowers on the base of the present model show them to be made of metal consistent with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century silver, it is possible that the piece is largely nineteenth-century in date.

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