The Home Beautiful: The Rosewater Basin, 1650

The Rosewater basin
Andreas Wickert I, 1650
Crown Copyright
The Royal Collection
Image Courtesy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Goldsmith Andreas Wickert I (1600-1661) created this silver gilt basin around 1650. The Augsburg silver-gilt dish displays a lightly-lobed, oval form which is applied with four cast cherubs. The whole of the basin is embossed and chased with scenes of the Flood (complete with drowning people and happy dolphins) and Noah and his kin boarding the Ark.

The surrounding cartouches show scenes of birds and animals, largely exotic, which represent the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa, since in the Seventeenth Century, those were the continents with which a German goldsmith felt the most certain. The reverse is engraved with the badge of the Prince of Wales--that, as you'll see, was a later addition.

So…using Chandler Bing voice…could this BE any more Baroque? Volutes and birds and butterflies and foliage and water and drowning and bugs and…everything!

Well, then…who do we know who really dug the Baroque silver? Our opulent, debauched buddy King George IV (The Prince Regent, etc.). He pioneered a renewed taste for Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century silver, and, this little number was one of the first such pieces that he bought. He purchased the piece in 1817 together with a companion ewer which he wrote in his journal as being, “ a chased silver Ewer supported by a Satyr with Butterfly at top.” Curiously, the Carlton House (King George IV’s London residence, now gone) inventory of 1825 lists only the basin, but does not mention the ewer. So, who knows where that ended up over a period of eight years.

Georgie purchased the pieces through Rundells—the court jeweler at the time--for £222 18s 0d.

Obviously, with the ewer, the basin would have been used for the washing of fingers at the dining table. The water would have been poured over rose petals. Now…who else do we know who would have really liked this thing? Queen Mary, of course! The consort of King George V—who no doubt tore apart Windsor Castle looking for that ewer—favored this basin and commissioned a set of silver figures to support it.