Everyone is familiar with the concept of ‘hiding in plain sight’, from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter. The album to be discussed in this paper is a case in point. Its part acquisition by the British Museum in 1917 was recorded by Campbell Dodgson in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of that year, in a note mainly concerned with Thomas Geminus’s Morysse and Damashin renewed and increased (1548), of which the British Museum had been negotiating to acquire the unique copy in Münster when the First World War broke out, and where it remains.Footnote ¹ However, Dodgson devoted a crisp and informative page to the album, and illustrated two drawings therefrom; his report to Trustees reveals that the acquisition was in exchange for sixteen duplicate prints by Dürer, at a valuation of £150, a transaction which would now be unusual.Footnote ² The acquisition was also noticed in the Burlington Magazine in 1918.Footnote ³ It next surfaced in Edward Croft-Murray and Paul Hulton’s 1960 British Museum Catalogue of British Drawings 16th & 17th Centuries, which incorporates thorough entries on the drawings from the album, illustrating six.Footnote ⁴ Thenceforward it seems to have escaped notice, apart from a brief reference and the illustration of one drawing in Philippa Glanville’s 1990 Silver in Tudor and Early Stuart England, and a slightly longer mention in Günter Irmscher’s review thereof in the 1993 Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte.Footnote ⁵

PROVENANCE

Before attempting to rescue the album from over sixty years of near oblivion, something should be recorded of its provenance.

The British Museum acquired the album, or rather ‘a large portion of its contents’, as Dodgson wrote, from E (for Edward) Peter Jones (1871–1961).Footnote ⁶ Jones was a wealthy man, proprietor of the Wolverhampton Corrugated Iron Company, founded there in 1857 but transferred in 1905 to Ellesmere Port, where it grew to employ about 2,000 workers, some to be provided with model housing designed under Jones’s aegis in about 1910 by his friend, James Lomax-Simpson (1882–1977), who later, as Lord Leverhulme’s favourite architect, designed the Lady Lever Art Gallery and Lever House on the Embankment. His daughter, Rosemary Lomax-Simpson, still living, was Jones’s god daughter.

Jones was a serious collector and in his large Regency house, Greenbank, on the outskirts of Chester, for which C H Reilly designed a new entrance door in 1923,Footnote ⁷ he assembled Old Master paintings, English furniture, prints, drawings, manuscripts, miniatures, books, Oriental ceramics and so on.Footnote ⁸ Jones was also a benefactor: he left his house for educational use and in 1916 he gave the British Museum a female nude attributed to Charles-Joseph Natoire (now given to Etienne Jeaurat) and two more female nudes by Fuseli, and in 1919 a dry-point by Sir Muirhead Bone.Footnote ⁹ In 1925 he presented a portrait of a man by Louis Tocqué to the National Gallery and in 1925, more relevant to the present context, he gave John Souch’s 1635 Sir William Aston at the Deathbed of His Wife to Manchester City Art Gallery.Footnote ¹⁰ In 1945 he presented the Pelican Portrait of Elizabeth i, from the collection of the earls of Suffolk and attributed to Nicholas Hilliard, to the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.Footnote ¹¹

At the same 1917 Antiquaries’ meeting at which Campbell Dodgson showed the album discussed here, H Clifford Smith of the V&A exhibited an oak carving of the Holy Trinity with traces of polychromy, which Jones had bought from a dealer in Manchester and was to present to the museum through the N A-C F.Footnote ¹² Whether this is English, as Clifford Smith thought, is unresolved, but Jones’s acquisition of this piece and of the other sixteenth- or seventeenth-century objects already mentioned suggests an eye for interesting English things. He was from 1932 a member of the Walpole Society, formed in 1911 ‘to promote the study of the history of British Art’.

CONTENTS: THE PRINTS

Now for the surviving contents of the album.Footnote ¹³ The original, according to Dodgson ‘a small folio volume in old calf’, must have been disbound by the date of acquisition of ‘a large portion of its contents’ by the British Museum, registered on 9 June 1917, with the further interesting detail that it had been ‘recently found at Chester’. The twenty drawings it contained were inserted in a new album, mounted on new pages or, when double-sided, set on hinges. Of the prints, forty-four were selected to fill gaps in the museum’s collection, and distributed accordingly. The nature, number and fate of those not selected is unrecorded. With one exception (fig 1), an unmounted panel by Adriaen Collaert of Juno surrounded by ornament (32),Footnote ¹⁴ those acquired were laid on boards. Hidden behind one mounted print, a design for an ewer copied in Amsterdam by Ahasuerus van Londerseel, probably in or after 1598 (39), is the date ‘[1]618’, presumably cropped, as Dodgson observed, in binding, which provides a plausible terminus ante for the album. A secure terminus post is provided by four of the six prints from Guillaume de la Quewellerie’s first suite (see fig 11), published in Amsterdam by Willem Jansz Blaeu in 1611 (40–3).Footnote ¹⁵ Nice qualifications can easily be imagined, but 1611 to 1618 provides a reasonable span for the album’s creation.

Fig 1.

Adriaen Collaert, Juno, from his ‘Judgment of Paris’ suite of six plates, engraving, Antwerp, before 1593. BM no. 1917,0609.32. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

This is not to say that the album did not incorporate earlier elements. Far from it. Apart from the single loose leaf Juno by Adriaen Collaert mentioned above, which must have been published in Antwerp before 1593, when it was used to decorate a German arquebus now in Vienna,Footnote ¹⁶ the album included forty-three prints from ten suites, by seven further designers, which will here be considered in a chronological order. First is a single plate (fig 2) with a pendant and two cross-shaped jewels below from a suite of ten designed by Hans Collaert, Adriaen’s father, and published by Hans Liefrinck in Antwerp in or before 1573, when Liefrinck died (31). Next come four plates, including the title page (fig 3), from the ten in a posthumous suite designed by Hans Collaert, engraved and published by Philip Galle in Antwerp in 1581 (25–8). Entitled Monilium Bullarum Inauriumque Artificiocissimae Icones [very artistic images of jewels, brooches and ear-rings], it was followed in 1582 by a second ten-plate suite, Pars Altera, Bullarum Inaurium Etc. Archetypi Arteficiosi [second part, artistic designs of brooches, ear-rings etc], engraved by Collaert’s son, presumably Adriaen, and again published by Philip Galle. One plate from the album (fig 4), a pendant with Neptune, comes from this latter suite (29). A comparable pendant therefrom, depicting Tobias and the Fish, was as a model for part of the 1620s plaster overmantel in the drawing room at Langleys in Essex. This source was identified by Anthony Wells-Cole, whose 1997 book has several mentions of Hans and one of Adriaen Collaert.Footnote ¹⁷

Fig 2.

Hans Collaert, pendant jewel with Diana, from a suite of ten plates, engraving, Antwerp, published by Hans Liefrinck, 1573 or earlier. BM no. 1917,0609.31. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Fig 3.

Hans Collaert, title page, Monilium…Icones, with pendant jewel, from a suite of ten plates, engraving, Antwerp, published by Philip Galle, 1581. BM no. 1917,0609.25. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Fig 4.

Hans Collaert, pendant jewel with Neptune, from a second suite of ten plates, Altera Pars, engraving, Antwerp, published by Philip Galle, 1582. BM no. 1917,0609.29. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

The next album group to be considered comprises six plates (fig 5) from a set of forty designs for silver vessels in the dotted manner, richly decorated with strapwork, fruit and heads, engraved by the Nuremberg goldsmith, Bernhart Zan, in 1581 and issued as a suite by Stefan Hermann in Ansbach, twenty-five miles south of Nuremberg, in 1584, under the title Allerley Gebuntznierte Fisirungen [all kinds of punched designs] (59–64). In a similar dotted manner, but later, was a suite of thirty-seven designs for silver by Paul Flindt published by Andreas Lüning in Vienna in 1593; like Zan, Flindt’s main – and native – base was Nuremberg. Twenty-five plates from his 1593 suite were copied in reverse and published in Amsterdam by Ahasuerus van Londerseel, probably first in 1598, the date on an unsigned title page in the RijksmuseumFootnote ¹⁸ with a title close to that belonging (undated) to this copied suite, inscribed Veel Schoene Stucken Om Te Dryven Den Goudtsmeden Dienelyck [many beautiful pieces to chase useful to goldsmiths], the source for seven plates (33–9) from the album (fig 6), one with the hidden and cropped 1618 date mentioned above on its verso.

Fig 5.

Bernhart Zan, double cup, from a suite of forty plates, dotted manner engraving, 1581, Ansbach, published by Stefan Hermann, 1584. BM no. 1917,0609.59. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Fig 6.

Paul Flindt, tankard, one of twenty-five reduced copies from a suite of forty plates (Andreas Lüning, Vienna, 1593), dotted manner engraving, Amsterdam, published by Ahasuerus van Londerseel, probably 1598. BM no. 1917,0609.37. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

In the same year that Flindt’s original suite was published in Vienna (1593), Daniel Mignot, a French goldsmith, plausibly Huguenot and possibly from Bourges (in 1591 and 1596 Jean Bobinet, active there as a medallist, engraved plates for Mignot), published two suites of ornament in Augsburg. That conventionally regarded as the first contains nine plates, including the title (fig 7), which bears the inscriptions ‘Tout Bien Vient de Dieu’ and ‘In Timore ac Charitate Dei’, and is complete in the album (44–52). This also contained six plates (fig 8), including the title, inscribed only ‘In Timore ac Charitate Dei’, from the second 1593 suite of eight plates (53–8). These Mignot designs are almost all of elaborate pendants, surrounded by small white on black motifs for enamelling and some naturalistic motifs; they are in that stretched grotesque style that was one of the precursors to the cosses de pois and auricular styles. The second suite, apart from the title, is entirely of pendants with central figures representing Virtues.

Fig 7.

Daniel Mignot, pendant with motifs for enamelling from a suite of nine plates, Tout Bien Vient de Dieu, engraving, Augsburg, 1593. BM no. 1917, 0609.44. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Fig 8.

Daniel Mignot, pendant, Iustitia, with motifs for enamelling from a suite of eight plates of Virtues, engraving, Augsburg, 1593. BM no. 1917,0609.58. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Another suite mainly of pendants, Ars His Myronis Nobilis Effingitur Pagellulis [the noble art of Myron is depicted in these diminutive pages], was represented in the album (fig 9) by four of its six plates (21–4). This was by Paul Birckenhultz, a goldsmith from Aachen, active in Paris and Rome before about 1590, when he settled in Frankfurt, where this suite is likely to have been published in about 1600. Two plates, including the title, depict jewelled flower vases and the remaining four jewelled pendants. If the date for the Birckenhultz suite is correct, the next print from the album was a singleton (fig 10) from a suite of seven plates by the monogrammist P R K, dated 1609 (30): this depicts a stretched grotesque pendant with a central lozenge of blackwork, and two hunting vignettes below. As a later suite by P R K was published in Amsterdam by Claes Jansz. Visscher in 1617, this is likely to be the place of publication of the 1609 suite. Amsterdam was also the place of publication for the latest prints from the album (fig 11), four plates from a suite of six designed by Guillaume de la Quewellerie and published by Willem Jansz Blaeu in 1611 (40–3): they show a wide range of small blackwork motifs for enamelling on jewellery. De la Quewellerie (1581–1661) was born a protestant in Oudenarde and became a master goldsmith in Leiden in 1612. Later, in 1635, he was to publish two accomplished suites in the cosses de pois style.Footnote ¹⁹

Fig 9.

Paul Birckenhultz, title page, Ars His Myronis…, with pendant jewel mounted as a vase from a suite of six plates, engraving, probably Frankfurt, about 1600. BM no. 1917,0609.21. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Fig 10.

Monogrammist PRK, pendant jewel from a suite of seven plates, engraving, probably Amsterdam, 1609. BM no. 1917,0609.30. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Fig 11.

Guillaume de la Quewellerie, ornaments for enamelling from a suite of six plates, engraving, Amsterdam, published by Willem Jansz Blaeu, 1611. BM no. 1917,0609.41. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

This rapid survey has covered all the forty-four prints from the album. Whether it originally contained further prints, and what, if any, these were, is impossible to know, but assuming that those which survive are representative, even if not the full complement, some general points may be risked. The first is that all but one, the Adriaen Collaert panel (fig 1) with Juno (32), are specifically for silver or jewellery, and almost two-thirds for the latter; and Collaert’s Juno could, of course, have served as a model for engraved or enamelled ornament on silver. It may also be remarked that the date range, from 1573 to 1611, is, at nearly forty years, substantial. Both these observations point towards the prints coming from the possession of a goldsmith, probably with a specialisation in jewellery, and probably connected with a well-established workshop, whether his own or his master’s, the date range suggesting a process of accumulation typical in such a context, although it is possible, if less likely, that all were acquired from a print dealer at one swoop. It is also worth remarking that all the designers, apart from the two Collaerts, were or probably were (the exception is the monogrammatist P R K about whom nothing is known) trained as goldsmiths.

Turning to the English context, which will emerge later, it is notable that, of the eight designers mentioned, only two, both Collaerts, crop up in Wells-ColeFootnote ²⁰ and no other prints by the remaining designers with an early English provenance seem to be cited in the literature on English silver or jewellery. It may be added that their various places of publication, Frankfurt, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Amsterdam (in one case copying a suite from Vienna) and Antwerp, suggest a strong bias in the album towards German centres. This is not particularly surprising, but these prints nonetheless supply an extra element of documentary bottom to notions of a German presence of, and German influence on, goldsmiths and jewellers active in London. If some actual borrowings could be recognised, à la Wells-Cole, further arguments could be developed.

Thomas Geminus’s Morysse and Damashin renewed and increased (1548), the first suite of ornamental engravings to have been published in London, and of international quality in their delicacy and precision – not surprisingly, given that, as Peter Fuhring recently discovered,Footnote ²¹ they are copies after du Cerceau (apart from the sophisticated strapwork grotesque title page with the arms of Edward vi) – has already been mentioned. The fullest copy, still in Münster, was discovered in the possession of working goldsmiths in Westphalia in about 1914, and was part of what Campbell Dodgson called a ‘shabby little volume’.Footnote ²² This also contained: Bible illustrations engraved by the monogrammist H S D after Pieter van der Borcht in Antwerp in 1572; double scenes from the Gospels by Virgil Solis of about 1559; and panels of moresque ornament of about 1550 by the monogrammist G G.Footnote ²³

Assemblages of ornament, perhaps the most prodigious being the volume in Stockholm containing 1,280 plates, which was probably created by an Augsburg-born lawyer, antiquarian and diplomat, Marquand Freher (1565–1614) – and was in 1616 owned by his lawyer brother, Paul (1571–1625)Footnote ²⁴ – are vital evidence for understanding the visual landscapes of the past. Unfortunately, they are few and far between. The enormous collection of 3,196 prints formed by Ferdinand Columbus (1488–1539) from about 1510 to his death certainly contained numerous ornament prints, although these do not seem to have been assembled as a separate category, but rather swept up by his universal appetite and ambition.Footnote ²⁵ However, two of his descriptive divisions, ‘lazos’ [knots] and ‘follages’ [foliages], incorporate some of his ornament. By contrast, Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol (1529–95) did divide his prints, some five thousand of which (of an estimated original seven thousand) survive at Schloss Ambras, and three of his surviving forty albums are of ornament: ‘Grodesche et Arabesche’ [grotesques and arabesques], ‘Allerlay Goldschmid Sachen’ [various goldsmiths’ things] and ‘Vasa diversa antiqua et moderna’ [various vases ancient and modern]. A fourth album, ‘Goldt Schmidt Arbet von Allerlaj gaistlichen und weltlichen Historien’ [goldsmith’s work consisting of various religious and secular stories], contains neither ornament nor designs but figurative subjects suitable for engraving on silver.Footnote ²⁶ This title suggests that it may have been assembled by a goldsmith or someone who knew what was appropriate and practical for this purpose.Footnote ²⁷ Ferdinand’s cousin, Philip ii of Spain (1527–98), also collected prints, nearly seven thousand, now distributed among thirty-six albums at the Escorial.Footnote ²⁸ These include one titled ‘Groteschi’, which includes vases, another, untitled but containing ornament, and a third, titled ‘Architecturas, Grotescas, Compartimentos’, almost entirely of ornament. In Boston is a made-up volume of mainly architectural ornament put together in about 1603 by the learned Ferdinand Hofmann, baron of Grünpichl and Strechau (1540–1607), president, until his dismissal in 1599, of Emperor Rudolf ii’s Hofkammer.Footnote ²⁹ He also owned a volume of drawings for gold and silver vessels by Ottavio Strada, and the Boston volume contains drawings by Giuseppe Arcimboldo depicting silk manufacture. A made-up volume in Stuttgart with 209 prints includes ornament by Crispin de Passe, Raphael Custos and Ahasuerus van Londerseel: it was put together in 1600 as a ‘visual encyclopaedia’ for the fourteen-year-old Ludwig Friedrich of Württemberg (1586–1631).Footnote ³⁰ An album at Schloss Wolfegg, entitled ‘Crotesques vor die Goldschmidt Vnd auf die mauern zu Mahlen’ [grotesques for the goldsmith and for painting on walls], is one of forty assembled by Maximilian Willibald, Truchsess of the Holy Roman Empire, count of Wolfegg and baron of Waldburg (1604–67).Footnote ³¹

All the albums so far mentioned were put together under the aegis of princely or noble collectors. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam owns one of unknown provenance of about 1575, the ‘Heemskerk-album’,Footnote ³² containing 244 prints by various artists. It uses Hans Vredeman de Vries’s suite of strapwork cartouches containing Latin quotations, Variarum Protractionum, as ‘chapter headings’Footnote ³³ and concludes with four plates from Jacques Androuet du Cerceau’s 1565 re-engraved edition of classical ruins after Léonard Thiry, Fragments d’architectures antiques,Footnote ³⁴ thus displaying awareness of the ornamental repertoire. Another anonymous album, probably slightly earlier, in the British Library contains 157 prints, of which about a third are of classical ruins or ornamental subjects by Hieronymus Cock, Lambert Suavius, du Cerceau, Giovanni Antonio da Brescia and René Boyvin; its purpose is unknown, but its rich strapwork binding suggests a wealthy patron.Footnote ³⁵ Quite other is an album in the collection of Robin Halwas, which must have been assembled in Bern in about 1605 by a capable designer, plausibly but not definitively identified as the stonemason and architect Daniel Heintz the Younger (1574–1633).Footnote ³⁶ Its contents include five calligraphic suites published from about 1595 to 1601 in Augsburg, Nuremberg and Amsterdam, but also including Theodor de Bry’s spectacular Nova Alphati [sic] Effictio (Frankfurt am Main, 1595). Other suites of ornament follow, notably Joseph Boillot, New Termis Buch (Strasbourg, 1604), Vredeman de Vries’s oval designs for inlay and Gabriel Krammer’s Architectura (Prague, 1600) and Schweiff Buechlein (Prague, 1602). The album also contains finished pen and wash drawings, a figural alphabet on twenty-three folios, designs for fountains, statues, a tomb and a cartouche on thirteen folios, and civic insignia of Swiss towns on twenty-three folios. This Bern album, neatly bound and well preserved, seems, with its combination of prints and drawings, to have been intended as a combination of personal archive and pattern-book. The presence of both prints and drawings anticipates the original composition of the album, which is the theme of this paper, albeit this latter’s drawings ingredient is, as will appear, much more varied and informal. Another type of album is represented by two volumes in the Bibliothèque Royale Albert i in Brussels, probably assembled by and for the Jesuit libraries in Malines and Antwerp after 1640, presumably for educational purposes. These contain a range of ornamental title-pages and of ornament suites, including designs for a goldsmith’s work and Edward Pierce’s accomplished friezes, dated 1640, the first published suite of real sophistication by an English-born designer.Footnote ³⁷

Now that Thomas Geminus himself has lost his originality, and overlooking Walter Gedde’s 1615 Booke of Sundry Draughtes,Footnote ³⁸ fascinating but essentially a local player, the first internationally significant book of ornament to have been published in London emerges as Nicasius Rousseel’s De Grotesco (1623), reprinted in Amsterdam by Claes Jansz. Visscher in 1644, possibly re-issued by Nicolaes ii Vissher in about 1680, and certainly by John Overton in London in about 1670 and Johannes de Ram in Amsterdam in 1684 (it was also, surprisingly, copied in Naples in 1637).Footnote ³⁹ De Grotesco, engraved by Jan Barra, contains twelve plates of vigorous and inventive, almost auricular, grotesque ornament inhabited by elongated monsters and insects. The style is very close to the final asymmetric plate in a suite by the Strasbourg goldsmith, Wendel Dietterlin the Younger, published by Balthasar Caymox in Nuremberg in about 1615.Footnote ⁴⁰ De Grotesco was dedicated to the goldsmith George Heriot (appointed jeweller to James i in 1603), who in 1624 was to leave £23,625 to the Edinburgh school and hospital that bear his name.Footnote ⁴¹ Rousseel, or Russell, who was born in Bruges and settled in London in about 1567, was well connected in the Jacobean art world: the painter, Cornelius Johnson, was his brother-in-law, Isaac Oliver stood godfather to one of his sons and he had contacts with Marcus Gheeraerts.Footnote ⁴² De Grotesco demonstrates the high level of ornamental sophistication achieved by at least one immigrant goldsmith in London at the beginning of the seventeenth century. That the compiler of the album here considered possessed a 1609 print (fig 10) by the monogrammist P R K (30) and most of a 1611 suite (fig 11) by de la Quewellerie (40–3) suggests that he too was well abreast of the latest developments in ornament.

CONTENTS: THE DRAWINGS

This paper has given priority to the prints from the British Museum album, partly because they have never received any attention as a group and partly because they are significant documents, however difficult to evaluate. The drawings mounted in the new album in 1917 are more familiar territory thanks to Croft-Murray and Hulton, albeit equally intractable. There are twenty sheets, or rather cut-out parts of sheets, of which seven have something on their versos. Codicological analysis is not a possibility, but in one instance (10 verso–11) an offset shows that two sheets followed one another (see fig 28), and, as these two are now mounted in sequence, it is likely that in 1917 the order of the original album was adopted. The drawings are in various techniques: pen and ink, graphite and wash. Croft-Murray and Hulton felt it probable that two or three hands were involved, and this is certainly possible. However, the present writer now inclines to the view that a single hand is responsible (15 – see fig 20 – is a probable exception), its character seeming different in different techniques or modes.

The dominant subject matter of the drawings is plate: this might have been silver or gold, but, given its elaboration, silver-gilt is the most likely intended medium (‘intended’ because almost all the relevant drawings are designs of a more or less developed character). Whether these designs were executed cannot be established, but, given that plate was perennially liable to be melted down, whether this be to convert it into money or into more fashionable forms, it would not be surprising if all were executed and all subsequently destroyed; the Civil War in particular wreaked havoc on high quality silver. Judging by the drawings, it is likely that the designs required skilled chasing and, to a less extent, embossing, while some elements would have been cast separately and applied.

The first drawing (fig 12) is probably for the border of a basin (1). Representing about two-sevenths of its total circumference, it displays the Stuart royal arms held aloft by putti above a marine procession. At its front is a lion ridden by a putto, while another, with sword and censer, hovers above; next are two female musicians with serpent and harp; then a unicorn and two sea-horses ridden by a putto, with another above with a wreath and a sword impaling a crown; Neptune, supported by yet another putto, brings up the rear. Although this design is at a sketch stage, it is clearly very ambitious and fit for a royal patron. Its marine theme anticipates Rubens’s great basin design in the National Gallery, executed for Charles i in the early 1630s and engraved, together with a ewer, by Jacques Neeffs.Footnote ⁴³ An earlier parallel is a basin now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, made in Paris in 1559–60, which uses printed designs by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau.Footnote ⁴⁴ The only comparable basin with an English provenance to survive is that bearing a London hallmark of 1617/18 given by Henry Howard, later sixth duke of Norfolk, to Norwich Corporation in 1663, which also features Neptune.Footnote ⁴⁵ The next British Museum drawing (fig 13), incorporating female musicians very close to those on the first, above deftly sketched ornament comparable to one of Paul Birckenhultz’s suites,Footnote ⁴⁶ is probably for one of twelve (or possibly thirteen) lobes forming the bowl of the basin, unless it was intended for the decoration of the accompanying ewer (2). This design is followed by one for a knife (fig 14), with an imperial crown and a shield, probably intended to receive the royal arms at the end of its handle, and the Prince of Wales’s feathers in a coronet next to the blade. Henry, Prince of Wales, died in November 1612 and his brother, Charles, was raised to that title in November 1616, so the knife must have been designed before or after that interval (3).

Fig 12.

Design for a section of the border of a basin. Pen and brown ink. Incorporating the Royal Arms of James i. BM no. 1917,0609.1. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Fig 13.

Design for a lobe of the fig 12 basin or its accompanying ewer, probably the former. Pen and brown ink. BM no. 1917,0609.2. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Fig 14.

Design for a knife. Pen and brown ink. Incorporating a closed imperial crown and the Prince of Wales’s feathers. BM no. 1917,0609.3. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Another arguably royal design (fig 15) represents two extraordinary sconces (13): that above, a more complete and finished design, includes a crowned eagle, a typically German motif, while the lower, evidently derived from this but only depicting the arm of the sconce, incorporates instead a lion with the imperial crown. It seems likely that the designer was here converting an earlier design for a German patron into an object fit for James i. Nothing like it survives, although a note dated 1646 in the inventory of Moray House, Edinburgh, refers to similar objects with a London royal provenance (the arms must have been inherited from Margaret, countess of Moray’s mother, Mary Dudley Sutton, countess of Home, who may have bought them in London after her marriage to the 1st earl in c 1607 or after his death in 1619).Footnote ⁴⁷ A plate of ornament (fig 16) dated 1599 from Gabriel Krammer’s Architectura, first published in Prague in 1600, supplies a less speculative parallel.Footnote ⁴⁸ The Swiss-born Krammer was cabinet-maker (and lifeguard) to the Emperor Rudolf, and his book was reprinted several times, including a Cologne edition in 1610. Stylistically, therefore, this design was both imperial and reasonably up-to-date.

Fig 15.

Design for two sconces. Pen and brown ink and grey wash, and graphite. The lower sconce incorporating a lion’s head and a state crown. BM no. 1917,0609.13. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Fig 16.

Plate 28, dated 1599, from Gabriel Krammer, Architectura, Prague, 1606 (first edition Prague, 1600). V&A, National Art Library 389,1891. Photograph: The author.

Possibly royal by association is a drawing (fig 17) that depicts a handsome basin whose rim is decorated with twelve insects, a motif that recalls the nature casts of the Nuremberg goldsmith Wenzel Jamnitzer (the Louvre possesses a basin by Wenzel Jamnitzer from the collection of Louis xiv whose bowl is decorated with such castsFootnote ⁴⁹ ) (8). However, the relief indicated by the use of wash is more likely to have been produced by chasing and embossing and the models more likely to have been prints. Vigil Solis published a suite of birds, insects and butterflies in 1557 and his workshop another in 1572.Footnote ⁵⁰ In 1592 in Frankfurt Jacob Hoefnagel issued four suites amounting to fifty-two plates under the general title, Archetypa Studiaque, with a mass of insects after his father, Joris Hoefnagel.Footnote ⁵¹ In 1594 in Antwerp Ahasuerus van Londerseel published a thirteen-plate suite of birds and insects, Volatilium Varii Generis Effigies, by his brother-in-law Nicolaas de Bruyn.Footnote ⁵² In 1610, in Amsterdam, Hendrik Hondius published a suite of twelve plates of birds and butterflies after the long-dead Marcus Gheeraerts i. The bowl of the basin, divided into six compartments, displays birds perched on fruit. The same motif is used on the title page of the second part of the Hoefnagel Archetypa Studiaque series, but closer are prints published in Nuremberg by the goldsmith Hieronymus Bang in about 1596, with birds on fruit as their principal motifs.Footnote ⁵³ Yet closer, and so close as to be plausibly identified as a direct source, is a suite of twelve plates of birds, often on fruit, by the Groningen goldsmith, Adriaen Muntinck, published in Amsterdam by Jan Janssen in 1617 (these may have derived from earlier friezes of birds by Hans Collaert).Footnote ⁵⁴ There is no surviving London silver parallel for this basin, but a greyhound drawn above it may indicate a royal link. This was the device of the earldom of Richmond, a Tudor title, and was one of the standards carried at James i’s funeral on 7 May 1625.Footnote ⁵⁵

Fig 17.

Design for a basin. Above a greyhound, probably for the earldom of Richmond. Pen and grey ink and grey and brown wash. BM no. 1917,0609. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Breaking from plate, it is worth noting three small and sketchy designs, probably for jewellery, a branch of goldsmiths’ work. The first (inconspicuous at the top of 9) comprises two hearts beneath the imperial crown with Cupid below (fig 18); the second, on the verso of the same sheet, an exceedingly summary Prince of Wales’s feathers above an oval with what may be a flower; and the third a more deliberate sketch (14 verso) with two pierced hearts against an anchor. The first two, at least, suggest further royal patronage. Following the insect basin on 8, the next sheet (9), drawn in the same style, shows a conventional standing cup with baluster stem (fig 18), decorated with a lively grotesque centred on a harpy, with next to it a grotesque with a light-hearted martial trophy, probably for one of the ‘hidden’ thirds of the cup. An earlier sheet (5) shows the base of a cup with strapwork and fruit; it has been folded on a vertical axis to create an offset of the outline, allowing alternative ornamental treatments. The style is close to prints by Bernhart Zan (for example 59–64; see fig 8) and Paul Flindt (for example 33–9; see fig 6). (A curious coincidence worth mentioning is that in March 1590, during his visit to Denmark for his marriage to Princess Anne, the then James vi of Scotland presented a somewhat crude Nuremberg cup and cover in this style to the University of Copenhagen, its present battered state resulting from Nelson’s bombardment of the city in 1807.Footnote ⁵⁶ )

Fig 18.

Design for a standing cup, grotesque ornament and a jewel with conjoined hearts BM no. 1917,0609.9. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

To conclude this coverage of a selection of the designs for plate from the album, a ewer (fig 19) incorporating a fine crop of sphinxes demonstrates the elegance and sophistication of which its draughtsman was capable (7). Further variations on the standing vessel theme (figs 20 and 21) are a facetted cup, apparently by a different hand (15), and a cup and cover of globular, lobed form (16). A curious extra worth citing is a rubbing (fig 22) from the lower part of a so-called ‘brautbecher’ (6), a type of wedding cup in the form of a wide-skirted female figure which seems to have originated in Nuremberg, and which is exemplified by printed designs (fig 23) by Paul Flindt.Footnote ⁵⁷ The rubbing is not a thing of beauty, with some of the pattern on the skirt highlighted in pencil, but, taken together with a later sheet (fig 24), which seems to be a pull from a silver bookbinding with grotesque ornament after the manner of Theodor de Bry (17), lends extra credence to the suggestion that the album was created within a workshop environment. A further ingredient is supplied by sketches of female emblematic figures, a very competent representation of Justice (11 verso), and on the succeeding sheet (fig 25) a sketchier – and wilder – representation of Fortune (12). This latter has on its verso a mysterious design of quite a different character: is it a pietre dure table, or a base for some sort of ornament?

Fig 19.

Design for a ewer. Graphite. BM no. 1917,0609.7. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Fig 20.

Design for a cup, its bowl gadrooned, its base facetted. Pen and brown ink. BM no. 1917,0609.15. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Fig 21.

Design for a cup and cover, of lobed form, the bowl with a central blank shield. Graphite. BM no. 1917,0609.16. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Fig 22.

Rubbing of part of a ‘brautbecher’, a reversible wedding cup in the form of a richly dressed woman. Rubbing, graphite and pen and black ink. BM no. 1917,0609.6. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Fig 23.

Paul Flindt, design for a ‘brautbecher’ from a suite of forty designs for goldsmiths’ work. Dotted manner engraving, Nuremberg, 1594. V&A no. E.2678-1910. Image: © V&A.

Fig 24.

Rubbing, probably from a silver bookbinding. Graphite. BM no. 1917,0609.17. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Fig 25.

Fortune. Graphite. BM no. 1917,0609.12. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Another genre is present on a sheet (19; fig 26) with a display of exceedingly Germanic and very fluently drawn heraldry, alongside two emblematic figures, one possibly Minerva, and a frame whose moresque character seems to look back to Balthasar SylviusFootnote ⁵⁸ and Virgil Solis.Footnote ⁵⁹ More Germanic heraldry is displayed on the preceding sheet (18; fig 27) in a coat of arms with the initials ‘R H’, which forms part of a design, also incorporating scenes of Daedalus and Icarus and Hero and Leander, for a third of the rim of what must have been a very ambitious basin. The final sheet (20) is a clumsily washed grouping of putti with martial attributes, perhaps also destined to decorate the rim of a basin.

Fig 26.

Germanic heraldry, two female figures (one Minerva?), and a strapwork cartouche. Pen and black ink, and grey and brown wash. BM no. 1917,0609.19. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Fig 27.

Design for a section of the border of a basin, with scenes depicting Daedalus and Icarus and Hero and Leander (?), and the initials ‘R H’. Pen and grey ink and wash. BM no. 1917,0609.18. Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Fig 28.

Putto playing a harp, striding woman (note the offset, round her head, of the graphite lion on BM no. 1917,0609,11), and strapwork crestings. Graphite and pen and brown ink with grey wash. BM no. 1917,0609.10 (verso). Photograph: The author.

This paper will end with a consideration of the tenth sheet (10). Its verso (fig 28) comprises a small pencil sketch of a putto playing a harp with, below, a dashing depiction in pen and ink of a striding female with a coronet, close to the Prague court style as exemplified by Bartholomeus Spranger, and not too distant from Isaac Oliver. Opposite, in pencil, are three designs for strapwork crestings (which Summerson, oddly, calls ‘taffrils’Footnote ⁶⁰ ), somewhat in the style of Hans Vredeman de Vries, although in a later and more curvaceous manner. Turning to the recto (fig 29), this includes five pencil studies of hands, which are related to the female overleaf, a small horse and a careful drawing of the arms of Thomas Cecil (1542–1623, Earl of Exeter since 1605) surrounded by the Garter he was given in 1601 and flanked by putti on clouds playing a viol and a harp. But what may be of even more interest are two variant architectural drawings for houses, one a plan with one elevation extended in part perspective, the other a perspective showing windows on a projecting bay and on a corner bay, the latter with summary ornament below them. The former, with angle turrets, is similar to two unlocated plans in John Thorpe’s Book of Architecture.Footnote ⁶¹ The latter plan, simpler but larger, may be compared with other Thorpe plans, two for Sir John Danvers’s house in Chelsea and another for Wothorpe, Northamptonshire, built for Thomas Cecil, Earl of Exeter, shortly before his death.Footnote ⁶² Summerson quotes Thomas Fuller, History of the Wortheis of England (1662):

Fig 29.

Sketches of hands, two house plans/perspectives, plausibly related to Wothorpe, and the arms of Thomas Cecil, Earl of Exeter. Graphite. BM no. 1917, 0609.10 (recto). Image: © The Trustees of the BM.

Clearly this drawing does not show Wothorpe as built, but the few notes of ornament below its windows are sufficiently deft to suggest that their draughtsman may at least have been involved in considering embellishments. It may be added that the two Thorpe plans with angle turrets show one of these changing in plan from square, below, to hexagonal, above, a possible prefigurement of those built at Wothorpe, which change from square to octagonal.