Rococo tankard

Silver, parcel gilt
Danzig 1778-1784 (date letter 'F')
Carl Ludwig Meyer (born 1740, master 1771-1803)
Height: 27.2 cm, weight: ca. 2900 g

The tankard with bulging walls stands on three stoutly shaped claws with integrated rolled volutes. The top of the drinking vessel is closed by a slightly domed lid. The S-shaped handle is used to hold the tankard.

The great delicacy of the tankard consists in its ornamental design with sculpted Rococo elements that turn the entire vessel into a kind of sculpture. The goldsmith’s rich repertoire of forms extends from smooth surfaces to fine punchwork, naturalist ornaments and the imaginatively designed handles.

Tankards were actually typical kinds of vessel in the 16th and 17th centuries, but later went out of fashion and were made more rarely. This “apparition” from Danzig is all the more astonishing, therefore, and without doubt was a very special commission that demanded the goldsmith’s entire art and craftsmanship. The goldsmith adopted a well-established shape for the drinking vessel in more than just a formal sense; the Rococo ornamentation also suggests that this was a persistent form even around 1780. This is by no means an unknown phenomenon in goldsmithing art – indeed there are frequent references and adherence to such old forms in silver objects made for craft guilds, or in ceremonial chains, where traditions are gladly upheld. This tankard must therefore be viewed as one of the last great works of 18th-century goldsmithing art from Danzig and as a magnificent and last representative of this traditional, centuries-old form of drinking vessel.

References

• Eugen von Czihak, Die Edelschmiedekunst früherer Zeiten in Preussen, Westpreußen Leipzig 1908, No. 506.