Jim Peake
Head of Department
Lot 14
An impressive Potsdam-Berlin engraved goblet and cover attributed to Elias Rosbach, circa 1735-40
19 November 2025, 10:30 GMT
London, Knightsbridge£1,000 - £2,000
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An impressive Potsdam-Berlin engraved goblet and cover attributed to Elias Rosbach, circa 1735-40
The thistle-shaped bowl with a solid beaded base and cut with basal gadroons, finely decorated with a continuous band of four putti or bacchantes playfully climbing among undulating acanthus foliage entwined with fruiting vine, a band of polished circlets to the rim, on a baluster stem cut with gadroons and facets, the spreading foot cut with spiral flutes, the domed cover with a tall knopped finial and similarly cut, 37cm high (2)
Footnotes
Elias Rosbach worked independently in Berlin from 1729 before being employed at Zechlin from 1742, where he died in 1765. The decoration of putti adorned with fruiting vine was a motif favoured by Gottfried Spiller among the early engravers at Potsdam, and by Rosbach among the next generation. The so-called Früchtekinder (children with fruit) which are characteristic of much of Spiller's work are executed much later by Rosbach in a style which is more gracious, decorative and with superior anatomical accuracy. Compare to the Silesian goblet, later engraved with Früchtekinder in Berlin in the 1720s, in the Ernesto Wolf Collection, which is illustrated and discussed by Brigitte Klesse and Hans Mayr, European Glass from 1500-1800 (1987), no.132. Compare also to the goblet illustrated by Robert Schmidt, Brandenburgische Gläser (1914), pl.34, no.2. A Zechlin goblet by Rosbach which is cut in a very similar way, also with slightly spiralling facets to the foot, is illustrated by Rudolf von Strasser, Licht und Farbe (2002), pp.332-4, no.203.