Maine Antique Digest April 2015

8-D Maine Antique Digest, April 2015

- feature -

over a period of around ten years

built the collection offered last

November in London—buying

from dealers and at auction in

Austria, the Czech Republic, and

Germany and taking full advan-

tage of the opportunities offered

by some major sales held during

that time.

Biemann’s focus was on

engraved clear glass only, and

good condition was always

sought. Spanning a period of

around 200 years from circa

1640, the collection ran to 68

lots, all bar three of which were

sold—with most of the bidding

done either by telephone or via

the Internet. Collectors from the

U.S.A. and Germany played an

important part, as did Continen-

tal European dealers acting for

clients.

The Bonhams specialist, John

Sandon, remarked on the attrac-

tion that the collection seemed to

hold for bidders normally asso-

ciated with other glass types—

one in particular, who had previ-

ously concentrated on 19th- and

20th-century examples, picking

up several of the more costly

items.

Franz Gondelach is widely

regarded as one of the more

important glass engravers of the

Baroque period and a master of

both bas-relief (

Tiefschnitt

) and

high-relief (

Hochschnitt

) deco-

ration techniques that had been

made possible by new glass com-

positions that allowed the pro-

duction of thicker walled vessels.

Unfortunately, the glass that Gon-

delach always used proved unsta-

ble as a result of too much potas-

sium being added to the melt. This

meant that many of his pieces suf-

fer from crizzling, or fine cracking

that reduces the transparency—to

the point where one expert once

declared that any glass that is not

even slightly crizzled could not be

the work of Gondelach.

Acquired at a Fischer auction

in Heilbronn, Germany in March

2000 and sold last November for

$78,690, this 8¾" tall Hessen

goblet of 1710-15 is decorated

with one of Gondelach’s favour-

ite decorative themes, satyrs and

Cupids.

A North Bohemian (Harrachs-

dorf) engraved goblet by Dominik

Biemann, made circa 1830-35

in the old spa town of Franzens-

bad (now Františkovy Lázne in

the Czech Republic) and sold for

$39,345 as part of his descendant’s

collection. The high-relief decora-

tion depicts a prancing horse and

a jumping foal. Equine subjects

were very popular with the aris-

tocratic or otherwise wealthy and

socially ambitious clients whom

Biemann catered to in Franzens-

bad. This goblet was one of Bie-

mann’s earlier purchases, having

been acquired for $8755 at a 1998

house sale held by Christies in

Germany.

Pictured is one of a set of 12 Aus-

trian engraved

Ranftbecher

made

by Franz Paul Gottstein at the

Imperial glass factory in Guten-

brunn, circa 1830. Each of the 5"

tall glasses with their heavy pro-

truding bases is decorated with

an allegorical scene of rural life

relating to the months of the year.

In this example, apple pickers are

at work.

ated 1607, this very

large (just over 15¼"

high) Frechen stoneware

Bellarmine or

Bartmann-

skrug

(bearded man jug)

was sold for $37,375 by

Bonhams on November

26 last year. One large and

two smaller bearded faces

or masks appear around the

neck, while the body is set

with three medallions bear-

ing various coats of arms,

betweenwhich are seen ram-

pant lions and long bearded

masks over smaller medal-

lions. The handle is flanked

by two ribbons bearing the

inscription

Drinck Und Est

Godes Nit Vergest

, which I

am told translates as “Drink

and Eat but Do not Forget.”

old under the counter,

the most popular book

about women’s bodies, sex,

pregnancy, and childbirth

in both Britain and Amer-

ica from its first appear-

ance in 1684 up to at least

the 1870s, and perhaps

much later, was

Aristotles

Master-piece.

There were

probably as many as 250

editions, perhaps many

more, but all are now

very rare and according

to the Library Company

of Philadelphia, which

holds 55 editions, it was

“…sold furtively by

country peddlers and in

general stores and tav-

erns; regular booksellers

seldom advertised it,

though they usually had

it under the counter.”

A copy that sold for

$35,715 at Bonhams on

November 12 last year is the only known com-

plete survivor of one of two distinct editions

that marked its first appearance in 1684—ver-

sions that exhibit different settings of the text but

for which no priority has been established. Just

seven copies of these two editions are recorded

in British and American libraries, but all of them

are incomplete and Bonhams could trace only

one other complete copy, an example of the

other 1684 edition sold by London book dealers,

Maggs Bros., in 2011.

The attribution to Aristotle is of course com-

pletely spurious and probably stems from an

attempt to give the work some measure of respect-

ability. Though effectively banned until the mid-

20th century, it was endlessly reprinted and circu-

lated and became one of the more notorious and

widely distributed sex books in the English lan-

guage. Such enduring popularity, said Bonhams,

was partly due to the practical advice on pregnancy

and the care of infants, and partly to its rather sen-

sationalised descriptions of the sexual act.

The unknown compiler drew much of his prac-

tical content from Lemnius’

Secret Miracles of

Nature

of 1564 and Rüff's 1554 midwifery man-

ual,

De conceptu et generatione hominis

, but

such sections as “A Discourse of Maiden-heads”

or “The Use and Action of the Genitals,” along

with those dealing with various forms of mon-

strosity, were undoubtedly what attracted many

readers.

It seems somehow appropriate that the 1684

edition first sold in London, now loose in its con-

temporary sheep binding, was printed and sold

by J How, “…next door to the Anchor Tavern in

Sweethings-Rents in Cornhil.”

Aristotle’s “Under-the-Counter” Masterpiece

The “Maid all Hairy” seen in the frontispiece to the

copy of

Aristotle’s Master-Piece

sold by Bonhams

for $35,715 was said to be the result of her mother

looking on a picture of John the Baptist clothed

in animal skins while she was pregnant. The leg-

end explains that both this hirsute maiden and the

black infant resulted from the imagination of their

parents.

A Drink with the Bearded Man

t emerged only last year from an

American collection, its where-

abouts having been unknown for over

a century, and on January 21 at Bon-

hams the small brown ink drawing by

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, illustrated far

right, was sold for $221,720—despite

the distraction of a clearly visible fold

across the middle.

Dating from 1873, it was one of at

least four drawings that Rossetti made

that year of the woman who was his

favourite model, his muse, and the

great love of his life, Jane Morris. And

it was executed at Kelmscott Manor,

which at the time was jointly rented by

Rossetti and Jane’s husband, a key fig-

ure of the Arts and Crafts movement,

the textile designer, writer, founder of

the Kelmscott Press, and social activ-

ist William Morris.

The drawing, said Bonhams, was

last seen in public shortly after Rosset-

ti’s death in 1882, but it recently resur-

faced among the effects of John Poole,

a Los Angeles businessman who died

in 2003 and whose possible relative,

a Dr. Allyn Poole of Cincinnati, Ohio,

had also owned another drawing of

Jane Morris, one that was presented

to the Cincinnati Art Museum in 1953.

Many of Jane’s features, if not her

reportedly penetrating grey eyes, are

instantly recognizable—strong bone

structure, voluptuous lips and rip-

pling dark hair. Jane has come to be

acknowledged as the embodiment

of Pre-Raphaelite beauty and Dante

Gabriel’s brother, William Michael

Rossetti, was, like so many others,

captivated by her beauty. He described

her face as “at once tragic, mystic,

passionate, calm, beautiful and gra-

cious—a face for a sculptor, and a

face for a painter—a face solitary in

England, and not at all like that of an

Englishwoman, but rather of an Ionian

Greek.”

It may seem a trifle ungallant, but

as the auctioneers added to their cat-

alogue entry a photograph of Jane, I

thought I might as well reproduce it

here—if only to show that the camera

might not always do a lady justice. It

was sourced from the William Morris

Gallery at Walthamstow in northeast

London, which last year mounted an

exhibition called

Rossetti’s Obsession:

Images of Jane Morris

Jane Morris—Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Obsession

The rediscovered Rossetti drawing of his muse, Jane

Morris, sold for $221,720 by Bonhams.

A photograph of Jane Morris—from

the collections of the William Morris

Gallery, a Georgian house in Lloyd

Park, Walthamstow, that for a few

years in the mid-19th century was the

Morris family home.