From the January 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
One of the most trumpeted acquisitions at TEFAF Maastricht in 2023 was the purchase by the Rijksmuseum of a spectacular ruby-red glass goblet in the shape of a nautilus shell, with baroque engravings of putti and foliage, dated 1685–90. This previously undocumented masterpiece by the German glassmaker and alchemist Johann Kunckel (1637–c. 1703), with engraving attributed to Gottfried Spiller (1663–1728), represents the peak of early German glass manufacture. The Venetians, who since the 12th century had dazzled with the fineness of their clear and coloured glass, had never managed to create a truly red glass. It was known that chemical solutions of copper or gold could act as a colourant. But it was Kunckel who, around 1684, discovered a reliable recipe. Besides the beauty of the colour, gold ruby glass was sought after for its supposed magical, healing properties.
This goblet, one of about 20 surviving from Kunckel’s early period, combines an extremely rare form with another achievement of late 17th-century Germany: relief engraving. Whereas the Venetians had pursued fineness and clarity, by the 17th century German glassmakers had perfected a thicker glass resilient enough to be wheel engraved, in two styles: intaglio Tiefschnitt and the rarer Hochschnitt, subtle quasi-three-dimensional relief engraving. Spiller had learned his craft in mountainous Bohemia and Silesia, where fast-flowing streams provided the water power required to grind down the backgrounds for Hochschnitt. In 1683 he moved to Berlin, where a water-powered engraving workshop was established in 1687. Alongside Friedrich Winter, he is celebrated as one of the finest glass engravers of his era.
Hochschnitt cup and cover (c. 1700) by Friedrich Winter. Courtesy Galerie Neuse, Bremen
These vanishingly rare items, sought after by princes for their Kunstkammers, are still highly prized. On 27 November at Bonhams in London a second nautilus-shaped Rubinglas with Hochschnitt engraving, also attributed to Kunckel and Spiller, achieved £25,600 against a £10,000–£15,000 estimate, despite damage to the bowl. Christopher Hamlyn of Mayflower Antiques, who has available a small ruby glass bowl with visible flecks of gold, silver-gilt mounting marked for Augsburg, and dated c. 1690 (£5,950), remarks: ‘Ruby glass dates from a period when German makers seemed to have stolen a march on the opposition. Between 1690 and 1710 these were all the rage. Collectors take an interest in that history.’
The world auction record for German glass is held by the Dessau Goblet, sold through Bonhams in 2013 for a staggering £277,250. Formed in clear glass and dated to 1700, it was carved by Friedrich Winter, who in 1687 had been granted a patent by Count Christoph Leopold von Schaffgotsch to set up a water-powered cutting works at Hermsdorf in Silesia. Besides its graceful execution and perfect condition, this goblet retains its cover. Jim Peake, glass specialist at Bonhams, notes that it was part of a single-owner sale – of the Muhleib Collection of European Glass: ‘Some people buy into noted collections. And single-owner sales of related items are more likely to draw in-person bidders.’ Galerie Neuse, based in Bremen, will present a fine glass cup and cover with Hochschnitt engraving by Winter, dated c. 1700, including the von Schaffgotsch armorial crest, at TEFAF Maastricht in March. It has been in two distinguished 19th- and 20th-century collections. Volker Wurster, one of the gallery’s directors, explains that while they handle very little German glass, exceptional Kunstkammer objects do ‘interest our clients and our museums’.
These very fine late 17th-century pieces are not the only sought-after works of early German glass. Distinctive glass vessels had been manufactured in northern and central Europe since at least the ninth century. Between the 12th and 15th centuries, small glasshouses proliferated in the forest areas of northern Germany, Silesia, Bohemia and Poland, with plentiful fuel for the furnaces. The earliest glass beakers had a greenish tinge, caused by natural impurities in the materials. In the 16th and 17th centuries, local makers enhanced this feature to emphasise the rustic character of the Waldglas – ‘forest glass’ – by contrast with the refined, colourless Venetian wares popular at the time. Many were decorated with ridges and blobs of glass – ‘prunts’ – applied to the sides of beakers to stop them slipping. Exceptional examples can fetch five-figure sums at auction – such as a Krautstrunk (‘cabbage-stalk’) beaker, round and fat with pointed prunts, sold from the Overduin Collection at Bonhams London in May 2014 for £12,500, or a smaller example sold from the same auction house in November 2016 for £17,500.
Enamelled Bohemian cobalt blue glass jug (1599), maker unknown. Courtesy Bonhams
Peake says that as the number of focused collectors has diminished, with contemporary collectors preferring one excellent piece to a cabinet of examples, the disparity in price between the best and the rest has widened dramatically. In November an emerald-green thick-walled and slightly tapering Waldglas beaker, inscribed Trinck mich auss unnd wirff mich Nider / Heb mich auff und vill mich Wider (‘Drink me dry and throw me down / Pick me up and fill me again’) and the date ‘Anno 1644’ in diamond-point script, with elaborate floral scrollwork to the reverse, sold for £40,960 against an estimate of £20,000–£30,000. It is a very early example of a distinctive group of so-called unbreakable glasses, with the same phrase engraved, most dated late 1650s and early 1660s. This one has no prunts, which were often applied to other examples. Another rarity, a Bohemian cobalt blue glass jug, dated 1599, with a fox hunt depicted in enamel round its belly, achieved just over £25,000 in 2019.
The early 1600s also saw mass production of the characteristic Roemer, or wine glass, with a conical or ovoid bowl on a shaft – finer than the early Waldglas, and frequently a star performer in Dutch still lifes. This potash-lime glass was resilient enough to be engraved. Caspar Lehmann, gem-cutter to Rudolf II of Prague, was the first to transfer gem-cutting skills to glass, in the early 1600s. His pupil Georg Schwanhardt took the skill to wealthy Nuremberg, establishing a school of engravers there. In 2013, in the Muhleib sale at Bonhams London, a Nuremberg goblet, elaborately engraved and signed by Schwanhardt (c. 1630), on a silver-gilt mount by Friedrich Hillebrandt (c. 1590), was chased to £133,250. Peake says that the sale in October at Bonhams Paris of fine pieces of engraved glass from the Christian Reizenstein Collection of European Glass showed less enthusiasm at the moment for the earlier Nuremberg pieces, and a surprising surge of interest in mid 18th-century refined gilded and engraved pieces from Lauenstein in Saxony, Zechelin in Poland and other centres. ‘There is a group of German scholars studying these. And collectors came back who had not bought for a while.’ Prices were in the high four figures.
Gilded and enamelled glass plate (c. 1700–25), Dresden. Maker unknown. Courtesy Christie’s
Christie’s specialist Matilda Burn says that huge disparities in value mean German glass rarely features in their sales. ‘We would sell fine enamelled pieces, and fine engraved pieces especially if they have a date. Armorial pieces fetch a premium. Silver mounted Rubinglas also, which is collected both by glass collectors and by Kunstkammer collectors. But we offer less than we used to.’ Their 2019 Exceptional Sale featured an extremely rare Dresden gilded and enamelled glass plate, created using a complicated technique where the gold foil is laid on to the reverse of the plate and the flower shapes are etched, engraved and enamelled through the foil. The glass itself is marbled. The catalogue note hazards that the workmanship was overseen by Walther Ehrenfried von Tschirnhaus – famous for discovering porcelain and thus shifting German attention from glass to ceramics. The Christie’s plate, dated to the first quarter of the 18th century, fetched £56,250 (estimate £25,000–£40,000).
From the January 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.