Royal-Swedish Nautilus Cup 

From the Royal-Swedish Collections
Engraving: Amsterdam, ca 1650
Swedish silver mount: Henning Petri (master 1657-1702), attr.
Nyköping, ca 1670 
Nautilus (Nautilus pompilius) shell, nacreous layer with etched low relief; mount: silver, cast, embossed, engraved, fire-gilt
Height 32 cm
Weight 720 g

Provenance: 1860-2017, Knutstorp Castle (Sweden), family of the counts Wachtmeister, most recently owned by Ebba, Countess Wachtmeister; ca 1860 became a possession of the Wachtmeister family as a wedding present to a bride from a woman who was a close friend of Queen Luise of Sweden (1828-1871), née Orange-Nassau; previously Stockholm, art collections owned by King Carl XV of Sweden (r. 1859-1872)

Published: Roosval, A.: Svenska slott och herresäten vid 1900-talets början. Skåne, Stockholm 1909, Vol. 1, pp. 185–186, illustrated

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This magnificent nautilus cup is remarkable for both the etched decoration of the bowl and the intricate silver mount, features that distinguish it as a court art work of the first water. The exquisite decoration on the fragile marine mollusc shell and the fine goldsmith’s work indicate the exotic and precious character of this Baroque art work, which was made as a particularly valuable piece of artificialia to be displayed in a Kunst- and Wunderkammer. The provenance of this cup clearly shows that it was a princely collector’s item: from the 1860s it was owned by the counts Wachtmeister of Knutstorp Castle in Sweden but was originally probably from the royal Swedish art collections. In the Nationalmuseet in Stockholm there is a companion-piece to the present cup, which is verifiably recorded as having belonged to Carl XV of Sweden (reign 1859-1872) and became part of the Nationalmuseet inventory as a royal bequest after his death in 1873 (Stockholm 2011, p. 125, Cat. No. 129). The nautilus shell is mounted with exactly the same suspended palmetto rim and the same decorated braces as well as identically structured feet in both the Stockholm nautilus cup and the companion-piece discussed here. The only noticeable difference is the figure on the shaft: the one on the Stockholm cup was probably replaced in the course of restoration work, hence is not a winged sirene like the one supporting the nautilus cup bowl discussed here.
The nautilus shells forming the bowls of the Stockholm cup and the present one are engraved in surface-covering low relief, forming a loose mesh of vegetal arabesques, sprays of flowers and birds. This decoration was executed in the mid-17th century in the Low Countries, probably by a mother-of-pearl engraver in Amsterdam. The Swedish royal family evidently acquired two decorated nautilus shells of this kind without mounts and had them mounted in the latter half of the 17th century to make a pair of standing cups. Neither the present vessel nor its companion-piece in the Nationalmuseet bears silver marks; nonetheless, it is safe to assume that the mounts for the exotic shells were made by a Swedish goldsmith. Mother-of-pearl shells worked in Amsterdam were usually sold without mounts, which tended to be made in Augsburg, Nuremberg and even Stockholm at the purchaser’s request.
An article written in 1909 on the art collections at Knutstorp Castle makes it possible to draw some conclusions about the identity of the artisan who was responsible for the mount of the cup discussed here. In that early essay the nautilus cup was described as ‘en ståtlig nautiluspokal, tysk arbeite från 1600-talet samt ett präktigt ovalt silfverfat med drifven ornering förfärdigadt omkring år 1700 av Nyköpingsguldsmeden Henning Petri’. That means the nautilus cup was exhibited at that time with an embossed silver basin by Henning Petri, a goldsmith from Nyköping. Might the cup and the basin have originally belonged together as a basin and ewer set, with both pieces made by the goldsmith Henning Petri of Nyköping? The silver cup mount is a stylistic match with that master goldsmith’s known work. Petri may have had the basin and ewer with the nautilus cup from the Gustav-Adolf art cabinet in mind when he was commissioned by the king to turn the two nautilus shells into precious cups.