Live Auction 1147European Noble & Private Collections Including Fine Tapestries
AN EMERALD-GREEN-TINTED SIGNED AND DATED DIAMOND-POINT ENGRAVED CALLIGRAPHIC SERVING-BOTTLE BY WILLEM VAN HEEMSKERK
Lot 340 Property from the Estate of Eric Martin Wunsch (lots 333-357)

AN EMERALD-GREEN-TINTED SIGNED AND DATED DIAMOND-POINT ENGRAVED CALLIGRAPHIC SERVING-BOTTLE BY WILLEM VAN HEEMSKERK

1689, THE NETHERLANDS, SIGNED AND DATED TO THE BASE

Closed2 October 2013

Price Realised

GBP 20,000

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AN EMERALD-GREEN-TINTED SIGNED AND DATED DIAMOND-POINT ENGRAVED CALLIGRAPHIC SERVING-BOTTLE BY WILLEM VAN HEEMSKERK
1689, THE NETHERLANDS, SIGNED AND DATED TO THE BASE
The slender neck with applied string rim, the flattened body engraved to each side with a coronet, the border of which is inscribed W:V:H between geometric ornament, above the mirror monogram WVH and the inscription LYD EN MYD. (suffer and abstain) to one side and VLYT BEDYD. (zeal is rewarding) to the other, on an applied trailed foot, the underside inscribed Willem van Heemskerk AEs 76½ Ao 1689 Leiden, minor surface scratching
13. (33 cm.) high

Leonardus van Heemskerk, Leiden, sold at auction by Delfos, Leiden, 2 November 1771, lot 37.
The Property of a Lady; Sotheby's, London, 21 October 1981, lot 183.
Joseph R. Ritman; sale Sotheby's, London, 14 November 1995, lot 75.

Specialist note

This would appear to be amongst one of the last pieces to be engraved by Willem Jacobszoon van Heemskerk (1613-1692). The monogram WVH could perhaps refer to his son Willem, at whose residence Willem Senior lived during the final years of his life. Three other pieces with mirror monograms were produced by Heemskerk, dated 1677, 1685 and one undated. For the 1685 dish, engraved with the mirror monogram of JVHAC, commemorating the marriage in December 1685 of M. Joost van Heemskerk, son of Willem and Anna Conink, see Pieter C. Ritsema van Eck, Glass in the Rijksmuseum, Vol. II, Amsterdam, 1995, p. 106, no. 87. Of the 112 items signed or attributed to van Heemskerk which Smit lists, the greatest proportion are wine-glasses. Only one other green-tinted serving-bottle of this type is recorded and it is dated 1689, see F.G.A.M. Smit, Uniquely Dutch Seventeenth-Century Calligraphy on glass, A Preliminary Catalogue, Peterborough, 1989, p. 58, no. D1.