A Dutch diamond-point engraved goblet and a cover with calligraphy by Willem van Heemskerk, dated 1685
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A Dutch diamond-point engraved goblet and a cover with calligraphy by Willem van Heemskerk, dated 1685
The round funnel bowl decorated in a fine calligraphic script with the inscription Alles heeft sijn tyd., the hollow inverted baluster knop set between two mereses and inscribed Eccles. Cap: 3.vs.I., on a wide folded conical foot, the associated domed cover, possibly by Heemskerk, inscribed INFESTUS INFESTIS. below a flatted knop finial surmounted by a quatrefoil knop, the goblet, 19.1cm high, 27.2cm high overall, signed on the baluster stem Willem van Heemskerk Aes. 72¾ Ao.1685 (2)
Sold for £46,850 inc. premium

Footnotes

  • Provenance:
    A.J.Guépin Collection, Eindhoven, sold at Christie's Amsterdam, 5 July 1989, lot 73, the cover lot 69

    The Cover:
    J.G.Wurfbain, Rheden, sold at Cohen and Katz, Rheden, 17 November 1937, lot 642 (part)
    With Ween and Klepman, Amsterdam

    Exhibited:
    Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 'Tentoon Stelling Oude Kunst', July-September 1936, no.779 (part)
    Museum het Prinsenhof, Delft, 'Een Glasie van Vriendschap', 21 December 1969 - 17 February 1970, nos.63 and 66

    The inscription on the bowl translates as 'To everything there is a season'; that on the cover as 'Aggression is dangerous'.

    Literature:
    Catalogus tentoonstelling oude kunst, Rijksmuseum (1936), 157 (no.779 part); 1936b, 158 (no.779 part)
    W.C.Braat, 'Collections de verres des Pays-Bas,' Bulletin Journées int. Verre (1962), 32
    Bernadine de Neeve, 'Dutch engraved Glass in the A.J.Guépin collection', Apollo 80 (1964), p.382, fig.6
    D.Bolten, Een glasie van vrienschap. De glazen van de collectie Guépin, Museum het Prinsenfof (1969), p.21 (no.63), fig.23 and the cover 22 (no.66 part)
    F.Smit, Uniquely Dutch Seventeenth-Century Calligraphy on Glass (1989), p.47, A12 and the cover p.84, I6

    The quotation on the bowl is taken from the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes 3, 1. In the Dutch it appears in H.L.Spiegel, Byspraax Almanack (1606, 1650).

    A similar goblet with the same phrase in calligraphy by Willem van Heemskerk, but dated 1682, is in the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (Jansen 1962, no.111).

Category: Decorative Arts / Glass

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