Silver beaker, mark of Michelsen, designed by Thorvald Bindesbøll, Copenhagen, 1900

Silver beaker, parcel-gilt, with an undulating profile, embossed and chased with tongue-like forms resembling sea anemones. The wavy lip is embossed and chased with cartouche like forms connected by a border of narrow swag shaped forms. The outside is plain, the inside gilt.

Purchased from A. Michelsen.
Shown at the Paris 1900 Exhibition.

Thorvald Bindesbøll trained as an architect and started practising in 1876. In 1883 he started designing earthernware for the Valby factory and thenceforward increasingly designed for the crafts. Bindesbøll's brilliant mastery of the Art Nouveau style distinguished him both locally and internationally as one of its most brilliant practitioners. The firm of Michelsen was founded in 1841 and it continues to flourish to this day. It contributed significantly to the major international exhibitions during the latter part of the 19th century.


EDWARDIAN SILVER

Despite relentless commercial pressures and a conservative public which favoured historicist revivals, innovations did emerge in European silverware in the early years of the 20th century, prior to the First World War. The cup and cover (1909-10) by Child & Child of Thurloe Place, South Kensington, in a revived, German Renaissance manner illustrates the prevailing mainstream taste for historicism while the Painter and Stainers’ Cup designed by C.R. Ashbee for Harris Heal (1900-01) is a very contemporary and subtle restatement of a 17th century design and epitomises the essence of the British Arts and Crafts movement.

By 1900, Ashbee and his Guild of Handicraft had a achieved a stylistic maturity. For a while the Guild even showed a modest profit but events were moving swiftly. In the 1890s the work produced by the Guild struck a fresh and original note. By the 1900s, Ashbee was to witness others adapting his ideas and extending them further. The workshops of Henry Wilson, Nelson Dawson and Edward Spencer of the Artificer’s Guild, Omar Ramsden and in Denmark, Michelsen and Georg Jensen began to produce work that was richer and more self assured than the austere, products of the Guild of Handicraft. These firms successfully popularised the Arts and Crafts philosophy and occasionally incorporated Art Nouveau tendencies. The retailer A.L. Liberty of Regent Street with his Cymric range of silver and jewellery was the amongst the most successful and all remained commercially viable long after the demise of the Guild in 1908.

(Graphic panel: the Silver Galleries)

This beaker was designed and made in Denmark. The designer, Thorvald Bindesbøll (1846-1908), initially trained as an architect. However, from 1883 he started to design ceramics and from then on he increasingly designed for the crafts. He was a master of the Art Nouveau style and here you can see its influence in the undulating rim and raised organic decoration. Bindesbøll became known both locally and internationally as one of its most brilliant practitioners. His silverware received international acclaim at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, which was a showcase for the Art Nouveau style.

The firm of A. Michelsen, who made the beaker, was founded in Copenhagen in 1841 and continues to this day. It contributed significantly to the major international exhibitions in the period 1850-1900.

1612-1900