A PEWTER MOUNTED GERMAN FAIENCE BIRNKRUG, DECORATED BY WOLFGANG ROSSLER

A PEWTER-MOUNTED GERMAN FAIENCE BIRNKRUG, DECORATED BY WOLFGANG ROSSLER

The jug attributed to Frankfurt, the mount to Nuremberg
Circa 1690-1700
20.7 cm high to the rim; 25.1 cm high to the tip of finial
Part of WR Monogram for Wolfgang Rossler

Decorated with a vivid fantasy landscape contained within an oval panel, surrounded by a border of pink roses. To the fore of are two figures walking along winding paths set amongst rocky outcrops and trees. The backdrop is distant, detailed and vast, with mountains shrouded in clouds and a castle nestled into the mountains on the right-hand side.

Rossler’s work is almost always signed to the base of the handle with a WR monogram, and for a long time he was referred to as the ‘Monogramist WR’. We now know he was born in 1655 in Nuremberg and trained there as a goldsmith, finishing his apprenticeship in 1676. He worked as a goldsmith from 1682 to 1711 and identified his work with a six-petalled rose on a shield. His earliest dated work on faience is dated 1681. [1]

Early on in his career Rossler tended to work in monochrome but switched to a polychrome palate around 1680. Landscapes such as this one tend to be the most accomplished of Rossler’s achievements. He repeated and perfected the motif, producing a variety of similar fantasy landscapes which seem to be of his own original design. When he copied engravings, particularly when they involve larger-scale people, the result tends to be less successful. Of all the Nuremberg hausmaler, Rossler is the one who most fully perfected the technical aspect of firing enamel on faience. His colours are extraordinarily vivid, and the colours are amplified with a thin colourless glaze. Fittingly, Pazaurek describes the ‘monogramist’ known as ‘WR’ to be ‘artistically only a little superior to Helmhack, but technically several times superior’.[2]

Condition:
Section of rim restuck with associated cracks partly emanating from firing crack. The handle broken in two parts and restuck with loss to the ‘R‘ of the monogram.

Provenance:
Robert G. Vater Collection
Anonymous sale; Bruun Rasmussen, Copenhagen, October 1971, lot 156

Literature:
Helmet Bosch, Die Nürnberger Hausmaler, (Munich, 1984), p. 308, no. 245.

Manners 2024
‘E & H Manners, ‘Decorators on Ceramics and Glass’, 2024, no. 4

 

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[1] For a more in-depth discussion on Rossler, see Helmet Bosch, Die Nürnberger Hausmaler, (Munich, 1984), pp. 275-277.

[2] See Alfred Ziffer, Malerei und Feuerkunst, Fayencen der Sammlung Neuner, (Munich, 2005), pp. 54-55, no. 20.

 

Price: £22,000.00