Lot Essay
The silver-mounted bottles found in this cabinet are labelled and inscribed in german with the drugs they contained. According to Prof. Dr. Dr. Christa Habrich, curator of the German National Medical History Museum in Ingolstadt, these drugs are typical remedies of the 17th and 18th century. The list includes:
rosen wasser - (rose water)
wund wasser - (wound water)
zimet essenz - (Cinammon essence)
mindarers geist - (minderus spirit)
melise geist - (spirit of sweet balm/melissa officialis)
Hotmanisch tropfen - (perhaps Hartman's drops)
silberglät esig. - (burnt lead)
balsam essenz - (essence of Balsam)
mÿrhen essenz - (essence of myrrh)
hallerische säure - (diluted sulphuric acid)
Paragual essenz - (Paraguay-tealant extract)
stugal essenz - (?)
Schwalben wasser - (mineral water from Schalben, Germany)
schmerc still ende essenz - (?)
stalle riche säure - (?)
Medicine, of a sort, have been in use for several thousand years but examples of cabinets richly decorated with silver and silver-gilt, made for the purpose of transporting medicines, apear to date only from the 16th century onward. Our knowladge of these cabinets and their contents derives primarily from 16th century books written for naval surgeons and from an example recovered from the Tudor ship Mary Rose, which sunk off the coast of England in 1545. Although less richly decorated it's surviving contents of sixty-four items, gives wonderful insight into the utensils used in the 16th century.
A visiting surgeon to The Netherlands in 1612, using the name Hildanus Frabricus, wrote a book on the subject after seeing the medicine cabinet owned by Maurits, Prince of Orange. Detailing the medicines and surgical tools such a cabinet should contain, he recommends some three hundred medicines, containing in some cases as many as 60 ingredients. Not only advising on the distribution and packing of the various sorts, he goes on to state that the names of all the medicines be labelled "in great letters to avoid confusion". John Woodall's book, The Surgeons Mate, published in 1617 further details the contents of these cabinets. Although the list of medicines he advises is very similar to Frabricus's, he suggests a wider range of instruments be added. As surgeon-general to the East India Company, Woodalls book was specified as compulsory study for all surgeons serving on company vessels.
It is apparent that the most common purpose for medicine cabinets was for the the use of surgeons on merchant and naval vessels. Examples, such as the present lot however, indicate from their size and fewer contents, that they were also supplied to royal courts and wealthy citizens for domestic use. Just as jewels, cosmetics and other precious household items were kept in "jewellery cabinets", so too were the valuable medicines available only to their wealthy owners.
Peter the Great, Tsar of all the Russia's (1689-1725), owned an example made in Augsburg by Tobias Lenghart (1580-1632), now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Although more richly decorated, the contents is strickingly similar to that of the present example by Von Horn. The upper shelf of each contains in the front row - six parcel-gilt canisters, applied with silver ornaments, and whilst Von Horn's cabinet contains behind these canisters, seventeen glass bottles with silver-gilt "screw-caps", Lenghart's contains sixteen. Various objects found in both, such as the scissors with silver-gilt handles are very similar in design. A further example, preserved in the Museum of Decorative Arts in Frankfurt am Main, is the superb richly decorated cabinet by another Augsburg silversmith with the maker's mark HF. Although the original owner of this extraodinary cabinet is unknown bearing only the monogram MRB, it must also have been for domestic use. A cabinet however, in the German Pharmacy Museum of Heidelburg by Hans Lenghart, Augsburg, circa 1600, with silver-mounted military trophies, would appear to have been made for a military gentleman.
By the 18th century, as more knowladge of medicines became available, and the cost of obtaining such products became less expensive, the medicine cabinet found it's common place in households throughout Europe and ceased to be a luxury object. Less emphesis was placed on decoration and more on the contents, thus, making the elaborate examples of the late 16th and early 17th century in collections today of utmost rarety.
Associated literature:
Dr. Anne Mortimer Young, Antique Medicine Chests, 1994, Vernier Press, Brighton, England.
Christie's wishes to thank Dr. Anne Mortimer Young for her extensive help on cataloguing this cabinet.
rosen wasser - (rose water)
wund wasser - (wound water)
zimet essenz - (Cinammon essence)
mindarers geist - (minderus spirit)
melise geist - (spirit of sweet balm/melissa officialis)
Hotmanisch tropfen - (perhaps Hartman's drops)
silberglät esig. - (burnt lead)
balsam essenz - (essence of Balsam)
mÿrhen essenz - (essence of myrrh)
hallerische säure - (diluted sulphuric acid)
Paragual essenz - (Paraguay-tealant extract)
stugal essenz - (?)
Schwalben wasser - (mineral water from Schalben, Germany)
schmerc still ende essenz - (?)
stalle riche säure - (?)
Medicine, of a sort, have been in use for several thousand years but examples of cabinets richly decorated with silver and silver-gilt, made for the purpose of transporting medicines, apear to date only from the 16th century onward. Our knowladge of these cabinets and their contents derives primarily from 16th century books written for naval surgeons and from an example recovered from the Tudor ship Mary Rose, which sunk off the coast of England in 1545. Although less richly decorated it's surviving contents of sixty-four items, gives wonderful insight into the utensils used in the 16th century.
A visiting surgeon to The Netherlands in 1612, using the name Hildanus Frabricus, wrote a book on the subject after seeing the medicine cabinet owned by Maurits, Prince of Orange. Detailing the medicines and surgical tools such a cabinet should contain, he recommends some three hundred medicines, containing in some cases as many as 60 ingredients. Not only advising on the distribution and packing of the various sorts, he goes on to state that the names of all the medicines be labelled "in great letters to avoid confusion". John Woodall's book, The Surgeons Mate, published in 1617 further details the contents of these cabinets. Although the list of medicines he advises is very similar to Frabricus's, he suggests a wider range of instruments be added. As surgeon-general to the East India Company, Woodalls book was specified as compulsory study for all surgeons serving on company vessels.
It is apparent that the most common purpose for medicine cabinets was for the the use of surgeons on merchant and naval vessels. Examples, such as the present lot however, indicate from their size and fewer contents, that they were also supplied to royal courts and wealthy citizens for domestic use. Just as jewels, cosmetics and other precious household items were kept in "jewellery cabinets", so too were the valuable medicines available only to their wealthy owners.
Peter the Great, Tsar of all the Russia's (1689-1725), owned an example made in Augsburg by Tobias Lenghart (1580-1632), now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Although more richly decorated, the contents is strickingly similar to that of the present example by Von Horn. The upper shelf of each contains in the front row - six parcel-gilt canisters, applied with silver ornaments, and whilst Von Horn's cabinet contains behind these canisters, seventeen glass bottles with silver-gilt "screw-caps", Lenghart's contains sixteen. Various objects found in both, such as the scissors with silver-gilt handles are very similar in design. A further example, preserved in the Museum of Decorative Arts in Frankfurt am Main, is the superb richly decorated cabinet by another Augsburg silversmith with the maker's mark HF. Although the original owner of this extraodinary cabinet is unknown bearing only the monogram MRB, it must also have been for domestic use. A cabinet however, in the German Pharmacy Museum of Heidelburg by Hans Lenghart, Augsburg, circa 1600, with silver-mounted military trophies, would appear to have been made for a military gentleman.
By the 18th century, as more knowladge of medicines became available, and the cost of obtaining such products became less expensive, the medicine cabinet found it's common place in households throughout Europe and ceased to be a luxury object. Less emphesis was placed on decoration and more on the contents, thus, making the elaborate examples of the late 16th and early 17th century in collections today of utmost rarety.
Associated literature:
Dr. Anne Mortimer Young, Antique Medicine Chests, 1994, Vernier Press, Brighton, England.
Christie's wishes to thank Dr. Anne Mortimer Young for her extensive help on cataloguing this cabinet.