Mazer bowl
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Designer / Maker
Designed by William Burges (1827-81)
Manufactured by Barkentin & Krall (partnership fl. 1883–1932/35)
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Detail
Silver, enamel and maplewood
9 x 12 (at top) x 8 (at base) cm
English (London), 1868
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Provenance
Presented to E.V. Austin by the Surrey Archaeological Society; […]; Bigwood Auctioneers, 1 April 2016, lot 200; English private collection
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Literature
Surrey Advertiser & County Times, 14 August 1869, p. 5
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Notes
The design of the present bowl or ‘cup’ anticipates a series of six silver and enamel drinking cups designed by Burges and manufactured for himself and a close circle of friends, in the 1870s; see, for example, J. Mordaunt Crook, William Burges and the High Victorian Dream, revised and enlarged edition, 2013, fig. 262. A page of designs for these bowls, dated 1873, is included in an album inscribed ‘Orfevrerie domestique’, in the collection of the RIBA (SD181 f.15).
A closely related silver, enamel and wood covered bowl, dated 1878, is in the collection of the British Museum (1981,0603.1).
Judy Rudoe, in Decorative Arts 1850-1950. A catalogue of the British Museum collection. 2nd ed., 1994, under no. 29, writes: ‘Burges’s eclectic inspiration rarely produced objects as restrained and elegant as this cup, which illustrates his interest in French Gothic art, whether thirteenth-century manuscript illumination, from which the grotesques and diaper ground…’.
The same might be said to apply to the Austin bowl.
Further information on the inscriptions will follow.
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Condition
Some minor repairs to enamel and cracks to the wooden bowl. The photographs were taken prior to conservation of the enamel.