.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Although the casket is unsigned, the execution of the ornament is patently that of Plácido Zuloaga. The arch decoration along the edge of the lid is a reduced version of that on the Fonthill Casket made for Alfred Morrison in 1870-71. The applied chiselled medallions appear on the writing-stand made for Queen Isabel II in 1859, Plácido's first major work, and are found as late as circa 1880 on a table clock now in the Khalili Collection (No. ZUL 108, now confirmed to be by Plácido). The stylised flowers on the lid are typical of Plácido's ornament and may be found on the lid of the Fonthill Casket as well as on a number of his domed boxes. While Plácido made many of these small desktop caskets with domed lids, this is the only one known to diverge from his standard pattern.
DAMASCENE: HISTORY AND TECHNIQUE
In the past few centuries, the term damascene has been loosely understood to mean gold and silver decoration applied to iron through a variety of processes: inlaying these metals into recesses chiselled in the form of the desired design, pressing wire or burnishing foil onto a roughened surface, vaporising mercury carrying gold in solution, or the hammering of bulk gold onto a rough surface where it is also secured by being driven into a series of spaced holes around its perimeter. This latter method is used to attach the precious metals leaving them in relief to be chased.
The meaning of damascene varies according to place and time: in sixteenth-century England, damaskeen referred to gold and silver ornament inlaid in iron in chiselled recesses to form a design. This could include inlay flush with the iron surface or bulk gold toed into recesses undercut into the iron but leaving most of its bulk in relief above the surface where it could be chased. Today the term damascene (Sp., damasquinado), is mostly applied to gold and silver appliqué of soft-metal wire attached to a lightly roughened iron surface by hammering.
PLáCIDO ZULOAGA: (1834-1910)
Plácido Zuloaga was born in Madrid in 1834. His family was from Eibar in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa, in the heart of the armsmaking country. His great uncle Ramón was Chief Inspector of the military arms factory of Placencia. Eibar and Placencia were adjacent towns, and to refer to gunmaking there was to refer to both. Plácido's father, Eusebio, a gunmaker, was Lieutenant Armourer of the Royal Armoury, a part of the palace complex in Madrid. His grandfather Blas was The Chief Armourer. The boy's career track would seem well defined.
When Plácido reached thirteen, his father sent him to Paris to study with Henry Lepage, the son of Jean, Napoleon's gunmaker, with whom Eusebio had studied. Henry apparently received pupils and, like his father, dealt in antiquities. Eusebio had chosen Lepage as his son's teacher because of his own experience years before in Jean's shop. However, when the revolution of 1848 broke out, the boy fled Paris and returned to Spain, with no money and mostly on foot.
During the late 1840s the Royal Armoury was undergoing a total renovation including the restoration of arms and armour damaged during the French occupation of 1808-14 and since then it had been allowed to fall into even greater disorder. Eusebio took Plácido with him during the restoration and they, along with a large group of contracted armourers and gunmakers, restored the damaged arms. The boy aided his father, and proved extremely adept at metalwork.
Eusebio had begun to attend and exhibit his arms at the national and international trade shows: he exhibited first in Madrid with middling success. The reaction was the same in 1850, again in Madrid, but Eusebio was saving his best efforts for the London Great Exhibition of 1851. The objects shown in London were important commissions from individuals and organisations. Digby-Wyatt pictured a number of these in his three-volume survey. Eusebio presented two pairs of pistols, iron overall, completely chiselled in relief with all backgrounds in gold foil over stippling. The other objects pictured are an iron powder flask, a bullet mould and a dagger in the form of a hunting knife, all decorated in the same manner. Plácido is believed to have accompanied his father to the London Exhibition.
Plácido himself became an exhibitor in Paris in 1855. The exhibition guide praises him for a grouping of sculpted iron dead birds and a boar in iron repoussé, and mentions that Plácido was the designer of the objects exhibited by his father. He also exhibited in Paris an album with iron covers, heavily chiselled, pierced and accented with damascening in gold and silver. On the inner face of the upper cover is an inscription bearing the monarchs' names: Francisco de Asís and Isabel II. While the work is attributed to Eusebio, it was most probably executed by Plácido. This follows a practise followed by father and son on all subsequent major commissions: Eusebio acted as the agent while Plácido executed the work, usually anonymously. This was the case with an iron-writing stand ordered by the queen in 1859 which Plácido signed on the inner face of its base plate. Likewise, a large table clock ordered by the queen mother, María Cristina for presentation to Napoleon III in 1865. Both the writing-stand and the clock were finished in the same manner as the upper cover of the album. By this time, Plácido was manager of the factory and was resident in Eibar. His business was prospering, much due to lucrative royal commissions. The term 'factory' should be understood in its broad sense: this indicated a group of individual artisans working in their own shops, executing Plácido's commissions in a manner prescribed by him. This was probably as it was years later when the industry had taken its final form and was fast becoming the principal industry of Eibar. We know that Plácido taught drawing and design which he believed, were the cornerstone of the art.
Many of the artisans were employed not in the application of damascene, but rather performed the heavy work of forging, filing and chiselling, skills that would have been already familiar to those coming from the arms factories. Others, specialists in hatching and punchwork, would have been specialists in preparing the ground for decoration. All of this was under Plácido's direct supervision.
Plácido continued to show his creations in the major international trade fairs, and it was probably during a London visit for the Exhibition of 1862 that he met Alfred Morrison, the one individual who was to have the greatest impact on Plácido's life and career. The two were brought together, it has been suggested, by the architect Owen Jones who had been commissioned to modernise the interior of Morrison's family home at Fonthill in accordance with his modern taste.
Jones was an hispanophile, smitten by the islamic art of Spain. During 1842 he had spent considerable time in the Alhambra in Granada drawing plans and elevations which he published with J. Goury. This may explain his original interest in the Spanish artist, Plácido Zuloaga. However, at that point, Plácido had not committed himself artistically to things moorish. The writing-stand commissioned by Isabel II (1859-60) and the Napoleon III table clock (1865) are pure renaissance revival, their elaborate foliate ornament chiselled in relief, with a gilt ground over stippling, shows not the least moorish influence. They continue the style of Eusebio's pistols exhibited in London in 1851. Plácido seems to have executed some commissions for Morrison following their 1862 meeting, but what these consisted of is unknown.
The fall of the Spanish monarchy in 1868 was disastrous for the Zuloagas. With Isabel II's exile the royal patronage, upon which the factory depended, was swept away overnight. Plácido was unable to pay back wages to his workmen and he was in debt for expenditures on materials for commissions for which he would never be reimbursed. He saw his only possible salvation in the hands of the English millionaire Alfred Morrison to whom he wrote offering his exclusive services for a yearly sum of 50.000 francs, 20.000 of which would go to his workmen.
Whatever was agreed upon was accepted and the result was that Plácido produced an iron italianate renaissance-style cassone more than two meters long. Carving has been reproduced in chiselled iron, the four sides and top are in iron repoussé, blackened, with a gilt background over fine stippling. Borders surrounding the panels are wire damascene over hatching. The interior is lined with silvered panels with black foliate designs and grotesques. This casket, made in Eibar, took two years to complete (1870-71) and is to date the finest manifestation of Plácido's art. Now called the Fonthill casket, in 1879 it was in the drawing room of Morrison's home at Carlton House Terrace.
During the 1870s and 1880s Plácido was no longer limiting his production to objects for the Morrisons. His damascening business, and his reputation, created a great demand for smaller pieces from his shop. Extremely popular were small footed iron caskets with a hinged domed lid, copiously damascened, smooth like the Alhambra vases and with foliate damascening overall. Their purpose was primarily decorative - a table or desktop ornament, just in the manner of similar boxes in the sixteenth century. Plácido also made small but elegant objects such as his pocket cigarette lighter for King Alfonso XII. These types of objects established the direction Eibar's proliferating industry would take in the final years of the nineteenth century and in the twentieth prior to the Spanish Civil War.
Footnote researched and compiled by J. D. Lavin.
DAMASCENE: HISTORY AND TECHNIQUE
In the past few centuries, the term damascene has been loosely understood to mean gold and silver decoration applied to iron through a variety of processes: inlaying these metals into recesses chiselled in the form of the desired design, pressing wire or burnishing foil onto a roughened surface, vaporising mercury carrying gold in solution, or the hammering of bulk gold onto a rough surface where it is also secured by being driven into a series of spaced holes around its perimeter. This latter method is used to attach the precious metals leaving them in relief to be chased.
The meaning of damascene varies according to place and time: in sixteenth-century England, damaskeen referred to gold and silver ornament inlaid in iron in chiselled recesses to form a design. This could include inlay flush with the iron surface or bulk gold toed into recesses undercut into the iron but leaving most of its bulk in relief above the surface where it could be chased. Today the term damascene (Sp., damasquinado), is mostly applied to gold and silver appliqué of soft-metal wire attached to a lightly roughened iron surface by hammering.
PLáCIDO ZULOAGA: (1834-1910)
Plácido Zuloaga was born in Madrid in 1834. His family was from Eibar in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa, in the heart of the armsmaking country. His great uncle Ramón was Chief Inspector of the military arms factory of Placencia. Eibar and Placencia were adjacent towns, and to refer to gunmaking there was to refer to both. Plácido's father, Eusebio, a gunmaker, was Lieutenant Armourer of the Royal Armoury, a part of the palace complex in Madrid. His grandfather Blas was The Chief Armourer. The boy's career track would seem well defined.
When Plácido reached thirteen, his father sent him to Paris to study with Henry Lepage, the son of Jean, Napoleon's gunmaker, with whom Eusebio had studied. Henry apparently received pupils and, like his father, dealt in antiquities. Eusebio had chosen Lepage as his son's teacher because of his own experience years before in Jean's shop. However, when the revolution of 1848 broke out, the boy fled Paris and returned to Spain, with no money and mostly on foot.
During the late 1840s the Royal Armoury was undergoing a total renovation including the restoration of arms and armour damaged during the French occupation of 1808-14 and since then it had been allowed to fall into even greater disorder. Eusebio took Plácido with him during the restoration and they, along with a large group of contracted armourers and gunmakers, restored the damaged arms. The boy aided his father, and proved extremely adept at metalwork.
Eusebio had begun to attend and exhibit his arms at the national and international trade shows: he exhibited first in Madrid with middling success. The reaction was the same in 1850, again in Madrid, but Eusebio was saving his best efforts for the London Great Exhibition of 1851. The objects shown in London were important commissions from individuals and organisations. Digby-Wyatt pictured a number of these in his three-volume survey. Eusebio presented two pairs of pistols, iron overall, completely chiselled in relief with all backgrounds in gold foil over stippling. The other objects pictured are an iron powder flask, a bullet mould and a dagger in the form of a hunting knife, all decorated in the same manner. Plácido is believed to have accompanied his father to the London Exhibition.
Plácido himself became an exhibitor in Paris in 1855. The exhibition guide praises him for a grouping of sculpted iron dead birds and a boar in iron repoussé, and mentions that Plácido was the designer of the objects exhibited by his father. He also exhibited in Paris an album with iron covers, heavily chiselled, pierced and accented with damascening in gold and silver. On the inner face of the upper cover is an inscription bearing the monarchs' names: Francisco de Asís and Isabel II. While the work is attributed to Eusebio, it was most probably executed by Plácido. This follows a practise followed by father and son on all subsequent major commissions: Eusebio acted as the agent while Plácido executed the work, usually anonymously. This was the case with an iron-writing stand ordered by the queen in 1859 which Plácido signed on the inner face of its base plate. Likewise, a large table clock ordered by the queen mother, María Cristina for presentation to Napoleon III in 1865. Both the writing-stand and the clock were finished in the same manner as the upper cover of the album. By this time, Plácido was manager of the factory and was resident in Eibar. His business was prospering, much due to lucrative royal commissions. The term 'factory' should be understood in its broad sense: this indicated a group of individual artisans working in their own shops, executing Plácido's commissions in a manner prescribed by him. This was probably as it was years later when the industry had taken its final form and was fast becoming the principal industry of Eibar. We know that Plácido taught drawing and design which he believed, were the cornerstone of the art.
Many of the artisans were employed not in the application of damascene, but rather performed the heavy work of forging, filing and chiselling, skills that would have been already familiar to those coming from the arms factories. Others, specialists in hatching and punchwork, would have been specialists in preparing the ground for decoration. All of this was under Plácido's direct supervision.
Plácido continued to show his creations in the major international trade fairs, and it was probably during a London visit for the Exhibition of 1862 that he met Alfred Morrison, the one individual who was to have the greatest impact on Plácido's life and career. The two were brought together, it has been suggested, by the architect Owen Jones who had been commissioned to modernise the interior of Morrison's family home at Fonthill in accordance with his modern taste.
Jones was an hispanophile, smitten by the islamic art of Spain. During 1842 he had spent considerable time in the Alhambra in Granada drawing plans and elevations which he published with J. Goury. This may explain his original interest in the Spanish artist, Plácido Zuloaga. However, at that point, Plácido had not committed himself artistically to things moorish. The writing-stand commissioned by Isabel II (1859-60) and the Napoleon III table clock (1865) are pure renaissance revival, their elaborate foliate ornament chiselled in relief, with a gilt ground over stippling, shows not the least moorish influence. They continue the style of Eusebio's pistols exhibited in London in 1851. Plácido seems to have executed some commissions for Morrison following their 1862 meeting, but what these consisted of is unknown.
The fall of the Spanish monarchy in 1868 was disastrous for the Zuloagas. With Isabel II's exile the royal patronage, upon which the factory depended, was swept away overnight. Plácido was unable to pay back wages to his workmen and he was in debt for expenditures on materials for commissions for which he would never be reimbursed. He saw his only possible salvation in the hands of the English millionaire Alfred Morrison to whom he wrote offering his exclusive services for a yearly sum of 50.000 francs, 20.000 of which would go to his workmen.
Whatever was agreed upon was accepted and the result was that Plácido produced an iron italianate renaissance-style cassone more than two meters long. Carving has been reproduced in chiselled iron, the four sides and top are in iron repoussé, blackened, with a gilt background over fine stippling. Borders surrounding the panels are wire damascene over hatching. The interior is lined with silvered panels with black foliate designs and grotesques. This casket, made in Eibar, took two years to complete (1870-71) and is to date the finest manifestation of Plácido's art. Now called the Fonthill casket, in 1879 it was in the drawing room of Morrison's home at Carlton House Terrace.
During the 1870s and 1880s Plácido was no longer limiting his production to objects for the Morrisons. His damascening business, and his reputation, created a great demand for smaller pieces from his shop. Extremely popular were small footed iron caskets with a hinged domed lid, copiously damascened, smooth like the Alhambra vases and with foliate damascening overall. Their purpose was primarily decorative - a table or desktop ornament, just in the manner of similar boxes in the sixteenth century. Plácido also made small but elegant objects such as his pocket cigarette lighter for King Alfonso XII. These types of objects established the direction Eibar's proliferating industry would take in the final years of the nineteenth century and in the twentieth prior to the Spanish Civil War.
Footnote researched and compiled by J. D. Lavin.