Lot Essay
Vasters designed the jeweled and enameled mounts on this cup after 16th-century examples by the Parisian goldsmith Richard Toutain the Younger. An onyx ewer at the Kunsthistorisches Museum commissioned by King Charles IX of France has similar black-and-white moresque mounts documented from the workshop of Toutain around 1570 (KHM inv. no. KK 1096). A famous sardonyx cup in the collection of Cardinal Mazarin at the Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre also has moresque enameling attributed to Toutain. Eight watercolor designs by Vasters for the mounts on this cup are in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (two are illustrated here).
The overall form of this cup is similar to an example at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for which Vasters’s designs exist (Y. Hackenbroch, “Reinhold Vasters, Goldsmith,” Metropolitan Museum Journal, vol. 19-20, 1984-85, figs. 130-131).
The overall form of this cup is similar to an example at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for which Vasters’s designs exist (Y. Hackenbroch, “Reinhold Vasters, Goldsmith,” Metropolitan Museum Journal, vol. 19-20, 1984-85, figs. 130-131).