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Lot Essay
The arms are those of Starck of Nuremberg and Imhof of Bavaria.
The beakers are engraved with the following scenes and inscriptions:
1a) A group of keys suspended on a ring above a mill and church in a landscape within the inscriptions:
Kein Schlüßel so kunstreich so öftnet alle Thüren,
Kein mensch so klug, der weiß ein jede Sach zuführen.
(No key is so finely crafted that it can open all doors,
no man is so clever that he knows how to do everything.)
1b) A figure washing his hands in water poured from a vase-shaped
ewer into a circular basin within the inscriptions:
Ein Mensch ohn Mensches Hulff kan nicht bestehe wot,
darumb dan eine Hand der andern dienen soll.
(A man cannot survive without another man's help,
therefore one hand should serve the other.)
The Latin inscription around the rim reads:
NON OMNIA POSSUMVS OMNES.
ERGO ALTERIUS ALTERA POSCIT OPEM
(We cannot all do everything.
So one asks another's help.)
2a) A swan on a lake beside bullrushes within the inscriptions:
Der Schwan nur einer farb, die Warheit uns anzeiget
Dz [Daß] sie Standthaftig ist, und von ihr selbst nicht weichet.
(The swan of just one color, showing us the truth,
that she is steadfast and does not waiver from her position.)
2b) A chameleon on a branch above an altar within the inscriptions:
Das Thierlein außer weiß, nimbt alle farben an,
Der Heuchler nur viel Scheins kein Wahrheit sage kan.
(The little animal turns all colors except for white,
The hypocrite is only appearances, and is unable to speak the truth.)
The Latin inscription around the rim reads:
SIC VERITAS
NON DURAT HYPOCRISIS
(So truth
not hypocrisy remains.)
Another beaker of similar form, with the engraved emblematic scenes captioned in Latin and with the German inscription above, by the same maker and dated 1642, is in the collection of the Schweizerisches Landesmuseum, Zürich (A. Gruber, Weltliches Silber, 1977 p. 34 cat. no. 13). This appears to be the beaker recorded by Marc Rosenberg (Der Goldschmiede Merkzeichen, 1925, vol. 3, no. 4220a).
The present beakers and the set by Müller are based on sources in popular German emblematic books of the late 16th- and early 17th-centuries. The scene with the swan on the lake is copied after Joachim Camerarius's Symbolorum ac Emblematum Ethico-politocorum published in Nuremberg in 1585, 1590 and 1605. The scenes depicting the washing of hands and the keys are copied after illustrations from Julius Wilhelm Zincgref's Emblematum Ethico-politicorum centuria, first published in Frankfurt in 1619.
The beakers are engraved with the following scenes and inscriptions:
1a) A group of keys suspended on a ring above a mill and church in a landscape within the inscriptions:
Kein Schlüßel so kunstreich so öftnet alle Thüren,
Kein mensch so klug, der weiß ein jede Sach zuführen.
(No key is so finely crafted that it can open all doors,
no man is so clever that he knows how to do everything.)
1b) A figure washing his hands in water poured from a vase-shaped
ewer into a circular basin within the inscriptions:
Ein Mensch ohn Mensches Hulff kan nicht bestehe wot,
darumb dan eine Hand der andern dienen soll.
(A man cannot survive without another man's help,
therefore one hand should serve the other.)
The Latin inscription around the rim reads:
NON OMNIA POSSUMVS OMNES.
ERGO ALTERIUS ALTERA POSCIT OPEM
(We cannot all do everything.
So one asks another's help.)
2a) A swan on a lake beside bullrushes within the inscriptions:
Der Schwan nur einer farb, die Warheit uns anzeiget
Dz [Daß] sie Standthaftig ist, und von ihr selbst nicht weichet.
(The swan of just one color, showing us the truth,
that she is steadfast and does not waiver from her position.)
2b) A chameleon on a branch above an altar within the inscriptions:
Das Thierlein außer weiß, nimbt alle farben an,
Der Heuchler nur viel Scheins kein Wahrheit sage kan.
(The little animal turns all colors except for white,
The hypocrite is only appearances, and is unable to speak the truth.)
The Latin inscription around the rim reads:
SIC VERITAS
NON DURAT HYPOCRISIS
(So truth
not hypocrisy remains.)
Another beaker of similar form, with the engraved emblematic scenes captioned in Latin and with the German inscription above, by the same maker and dated 1642, is in the collection of the Schweizerisches Landesmuseum, Zürich (A. Gruber, Weltliches Silber, 1977 p. 34 cat. no. 13). This appears to be the beaker recorded by Marc Rosenberg (Der Goldschmiede Merkzeichen, 1925, vol. 3, no. 4220a).
The present beakers and the set by Müller are based on sources in popular German emblematic books of the late 16th- and early 17th-centuries. The scene with the swan on the lake is copied after Joachim Camerarius's Symbolorum ac Emblematum Ethico-politocorum published in Nuremberg in 1585, 1590 and 1605. The scenes depicting the washing of hands and the keys are copied after illustrations from Julius Wilhelm Zincgref's Emblematum Ethico-politicorum centuria, first published in Frankfurt in 1619.