Court coquilla nut flacon, Netherlandish, ca 1680. Coquilla (Attalea funifera) nut, carved; silver, repoussé, cast, engraved and fire-gilt. Coat of arms of the noble Silesian Mohl family on the screw cap of the flacon. Height 9.5 cm. © Kuntskammer Georg Laue at TEFAF Maastricht 2025

The bowl of this exotic little flacon consists of a coquilla nut, decorated with a sequence of genre scenes carved in high relief. To form a pedestal, the tip of a second coquilla nut was worked into a domed base with a foot-ring mounted with dentate edging of fire-gilt silver. The mouth of the little flask is also decorated with a silver-gilt mount that is engraved, etched and fitted with a screw-on lid. Users unscrewed the lid of the flacon to drip aromatic essences into the flacon from above. The domed bottom of the flacon also unscrews to accommodate a sponge drenched with aromatic substances. This exotic-looking flacon is, therefore, a scent vial which was used as a container for expensive essences.

Love is the thematic focus on the flacon presented here. Paratactically arranged as if on a narrative frieze, an array of figures appears on the wall of the vial, including a loving couple sitting together, with a man standing next to them, who is pouring wine for the wooer from a round flask. A man is seated behind him playing a string instrument, and ahead of him two boules players are depicted on a court in front of a tree: sitting together, making music and playing boules are activities associated with courtship in the early modern age. An engraving on the mouth of the vessel confirms that the genre scenes carved on the flacon do in fact represent an emblematic depiction of love. Here a landscape where yet another seated loving couple has been rendered in an exquisite etching technique. There is also a hunting scene here in which a stag is pursued by hounds. In the seventeenth century stag hunting symbolised wooing a woman whose heart a man might only win with ardent courtship and patience.

From the stylistic standpoint, the flacon discussed here belongs to late seventeenth-century Dutch art. Since the mid-seventeenth century the ships sent out by the Dutch West India Company had been bringing not only raw cane sugar from Brazil but also exotic treasures – the cargoes are sure to have included coquilla nuts. The silver-gilt mount of the flacon is, on the other hand, probably the work of a German goldsmith. It bears no marks but the coat of arms of the Mohl von Mühlrädlitz or Mohl von Modrzelicz is displayed on the lid. Descended from Prussian-Silesian nobility, this family lived in Moravia (one of the three historical lands forming the present-day Czech Republic) in the seventeenth century.