Lot Essay
This casket exemplifies the production of Augsburg goldsmiths incorporating hard-stones in gold and silver mounts. Nüremberg and Augsburg have competed since the last quarter of the sixteeth century with Milan, Florence and Prague as centers for the glyptic art. Although it is still not known whether the hard-stones were cut in Germany by the guild of the stone-cutters (Steinschneider) and then mounted by the goldsmiths or whether they were supplied from foreign sources, the large quantity of surviving pieces with rock-crystal, topaz, agate and jasper attest to the extensive use of these materials among Augsburg goldsmiths. The Baur brothers, Tobias and Matthäus II, were probably the most famous and prolific of them. Their toilet services, tea and coffee services and nécessaires-de-voyage set with agate enjoyed a great popularity in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. An eighteen-piece tea and coffee service in the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Kassel is illustrated in Lorenz Seling, Silber und Gold, Munich, 1994, no. 118, p. 441. A magnificent nécessaire with over fifty pieces set with agate in gold mounts is also kelpt at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. Our present lot was presumably part of such an ensemble and used to store precious belongings.