拍品專文
This pitcher is typical of the celebrated silver in the Japanese taste designed by Edward C. Moore for Tiffany's exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1878. The extravagant wedding in that year of Hannah, only daughter of Baron Meyer de Rothschild (1st name?) was the occasion of hundreds of gifts; nine members of the Rothschild family appear in Tiffany's Blue Book of buyers at the 1878 Exposition (Charles H. Carpenter, Jr., Tiffany Silver, 1978, p. 195). The French control mark and the provenance of this pitcher support the likelihood that it was purchased at the Paris Exposition as a present for the Earl and Countess of Rosebery.
Edward Moore's hammered and matte-finished surfaces combined with his mastery of Japanese colored alloys won much praise from French critics at the Exposition. Reviewer Emile Bergerat wrote:
I am left grasped by real admiration before certain silver objects that I consider as the outstanding ones of the house. It is a shimmering velvetness to which nothing is comparable. The light breaks finely on the object's facets and shoots out with an impish fancy, here and there, according to the mania in one sense or the other. It is very clever and, I believe, very new...The work of encrustation of inlaid enamel work and of alloying tones, the mixtures of metals, are equally worthy of attracting the attention of connoisseurs. They are executed with an infinite taste and which one must congratulate twice an American manufacturer...But, if there exists an American artist capable of conceiving the delicious motifs of several pitchers, cups, flower pots and match holders which they have shown me at the Exhibition, I counsel him to sign his work. He will be celebrated in Paris in eight hours.
--from Causerie-Tiffany, 1878
A full explanation of Moore's achievements in the interpretation of Japanese design and technique is given by Frances Gruber Safford and Ruth Wilford Caccavale, in "Japanesque Silver by Tiffany and Company in the Metropolitan Museum of Art," Antiques Magazine, October 1987, pp. 808-819. Moore collected Japanese metalwork as models for his designs. The leaf and vine decoration on the present vase is based on a piece from his personal collection, bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and illustrated in Safford and Caccavale, op. cit., pl. II, p. 809
The only other known pitcher made to this design is in the permanent collection of Goldsmith's Hall, London.
Photo caption: Tiffany's hammering and mounting design for this pitcher. Copyright © Tiffany and Company, 1992. Not to be published or reproduced without prior permission. No permission for commercial use will be granted except by written license or agreement.
Edward Moore's hammered and matte-finished surfaces combined with his mastery of Japanese colored alloys won much praise from French critics at the Exposition. Reviewer Emile Bergerat wrote:
I am left grasped by real admiration before certain silver objects that I consider as the outstanding ones of the house. It is a shimmering velvetness to which nothing is comparable. The light breaks finely on the object's facets and shoots out with an impish fancy, here and there, according to the mania in one sense or the other. It is very clever and, I believe, very new...The work of encrustation of inlaid enamel work and of alloying tones, the mixtures of metals, are equally worthy of attracting the attention of connoisseurs. They are executed with an infinite taste and which one must congratulate twice an American manufacturer...But, if there exists an American artist capable of conceiving the delicious motifs of several pitchers, cups, flower pots and match holders which they have shown me at the Exhibition, I counsel him to sign his work. He will be celebrated in Paris in eight hours.
--from Causerie-Tiffany, 1878
A full explanation of Moore's achievements in the interpretation of Japanese design and technique is given by Frances Gruber Safford and Ruth Wilford Caccavale, in "Japanesque Silver by Tiffany and Company in the Metropolitan Museum of Art," Antiques Magazine, October 1987, pp. 808-819. Moore collected Japanese metalwork as models for his designs. The leaf and vine decoration on the present vase is based on a piece from his personal collection, bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and illustrated in Safford and Caccavale, op. cit., pl. II, p. 809
The only other known pitcher made to this design is in the permanent collection of Goldsmith's Hall, London.
Photo caption: Tiffany's hammering and mounting design for this pitcher. Copyright © Tiffany and Company, 1992. Not to be published or reproduced without prior permission. No permission for commercial use will be granted except by written license or agreement.