A HANDCOLOURED COPPER ENGRAVED MAP OF THE CITY OF AMERSFOORT 'AMISFURTUM'

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Property of the late Dr Walter Buchler (lots 463-543, 762) "Ours is not a collection. We buy beautiful and useful things to make our everyday life agreeable." Thus, during their 64-years' marriage, the rooms of the Brunswick home of Dr. Walther P. Buchler (1900 - 1998) and Ingeborg Käthe Buchler neé Nordmann (1915 - 2009) became a unique and harmonious blend of paintings, furniture, china and silver. The latter three -which they called their household equipment- were in constant use, but the paintings rarely left the house for exhibitions, as their absence would have destroyed the balance. For more than 50 years Walther Buchler -with a doctorate in chemistry- was general manager and majority shareholder of a family firm which has a 150 years' tradition of extracting quinine for pharmaceutical use and was a pioneer in research and development of the use of radioactivity especially for medical treatment. Together with his beautiful and gifted wife who brought with her the spirit of her native Berlin of the Twenties and her liberal family background, they enjoyed to open their house to family, artists, musicians, actors, scientists and scholars as well as the international clientele of the firm, all of them loving the welcoming gemütliche atmosphere of the 19th century villa with the view on the river and the chestnut trees of the beautiful Brunswick monument square. The couple's mutual interest in politics, social questions, history and the importance of Germany's regional differences made them discover and collect the arts and crafts of the historical Brunswick region under the Dukes of Braunschweig-Lüneburg-Wolfenbuettel, especially the baroque furniture with inlays of ivory or precious metals, the china from the Fürstenberg manufacture and the "household" silver created by the famous Brunswick silver- and goldsmiths for the citizens rather than the court. These adorned their famous dinner table around which many plans and problems were discussed and often solved in the generous hospitality of the open-minded hosts. It was their historical interest which turned them into ardent collectors of historical clocks and scientific instruments of the 17th century Hager family. Walther Buchler discovered that the latter were distant relations while writing a history of the firm and family and he wanted to find out more about them. His keen expertise linked with his exacting scientific background -mellowed by his wife's charm and taste- made them become acknowledged as esteemed counterparts of museum curators, art dealers, collectors, connoisseurs and became part of two important scholarly publications (Gerd Spies: Braunschweiger Goldschmiede. 3vols. Berlin/München 1996; Günther Oestmann: Uhren und wissenschaftliche Instrumente der Familie Hager. Braunschweig 1999). Most of the Braunschweig silver has been donated to Braunschweig's Städtisches Museum, all Fürstenberg china and the Hager instruments will go as donations to the Stiftung Braunschweigischer Kulturbesitz. The three important German impressionist paintings by Corinth, Liebermann and Slevogt will be for sale in London. Not very many items remain to be sold at auction in Amsterdam, but yet they will show the taste for quality and variety, the love for detail and for the original that shaped the house and background of an unusual couple whose lives spanned a century with its two great wars and who never lost their generous and warm-hearted attitude and humanistic approach to the challenges of their time.

A HANDCOLOURED COPPER ENGRAVED MAP OF THE CITY OF AMERSFOORT 'AMISFURTUM'

JOAN BLAEU (1596-1673), AMSTERDAM. CIRCA 1650

Details

A HANDCOLOURED COPPER ENGRAVED MAP OF THE CITY OF AMERSFOORT 'AMISFURTUM'
JOAN BLAEU (1596-1673), AMSTERDAM. CIRCA 1650
Large sheet, verso text in latin; Framed and glazed, unexamined out of frame
417 x 521 mm. (P)

Special notice

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Lot Essay

From Toonneel der Steden van de Vereenigde Nederlanden Met hare Beschrijvingen, Amsterdam, 1649-1651

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