Ribbed bottle

This bottle, a part of a set of coloured South German glassware mounted in gold plated silver at the turn of the seventeenth century in Augsburg – at the time a city regarded as the most important centre of goldsmith’s art in the world – is unique in Polish collections. Apart from the palace in Wilanów there is only a single such example (National Museum in Warsaw) of this form of decorating glass vessels. Such luxury items were commissioned by the wealthiest clients: as a rule, they enhanced palace interiors and acted as a stately supplement of banquets rather than fulfilling a utilitarian function. An excellent example is an imposing ribbed bottle whose shape resembles that of a pilgrim’s bottle, made of magnificent red glass, whose hue was obtained thanks to compounds of gold applied for dyeing. The intensity of the colour changed suitably to the thickness of the glass, with the thinnest walls assuming a subtle rose shade. In Wilanów ruby glassware appeared in the nineteenth century to embellish the royal apartments together with other costly and admirable items kept in cupboards, and Stanisław Kostka Potocki probably purchased two such bottles in 1800. Already at that time they were considered to be the most outstanding in the artefacts collection, and it is not surprising that in 1856 they were shown at an “Exhibition of antiquities and objets d’art” held at the Potocki Palace in Krakowskie Przedmieście Street. True, they were considered to be even a hundred years old but the characteristic “pinecone” marking them was deciphered as a brand of Augsburg. Today, thanks to the letter marks on the silver we can also identify the person who contributed to the origin of this exceptional vessel as Albrecht Biller, from c. 1681 a master goldsmith who ran a workshop until his death in 1720. The extensive and precisely engraved setting with a raised acanthus leaf is an example of a superior goldsmith’s art.