Large silver tankard with scallop shell decoration, Hieronymus II Hol, Gdansk, ca 1730. Silver, partly cast from nature, embossed, engraved, chased, punched and fire-gilt. City mark (R1500) and maker’s mark (R1582) on the lip. Engraved inscription on the underside ‘No. 10 2 H 74 Sol’. Height 23.5 cm. Weight 1189 g. © Kuntskammer Georg Laue

Published in: Georg Laue: Tresor. Treasures for European Kunstkammer, Munich 2017, pp. 117-118, pp. 209-210, Cat. No. 20.

This monumental tankard is entirely dedicated to the sea: The foot-ring, the wall and the lid are decorated all round with scallop shells and the handle seems to imitate flowing water, even a wave, in form and texture. The finial is a scallop completely in the round and the two halves of the bivalve gape open. The marine mollusc looks so realistic because it was cast from nature.

The hallmarks on the lip verify that this magnificent tankard was made by the Gdansk goldsmith Hieronymus II Hol. Several objects in silver by this master goldsmith, who was active from 1688 until his death in 1735, are kept in the State Hermitage in St Petersburg and the Treasury on Wawel Hill in Kraków @wawelcastle – among the latter, a silver tankard of similar size decorated with mythological scenes.

The tankard discussed here exemplifies a type of tankard on a large scale that was particularly popular in central Germany ca 1700. At the same time, it differs from typologically related works in silver because of its unusual decoration, which anticipates the triumph of scallop-shell decoration, known as rocaille in the second quarter of the eighteenth century.