Academic Scientific JournalsRevisiting amber art from eighteenth-century Königsberg. New findings regarding a game box at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26881/porta.2024.23.09Keywords:
Amber, game box, Königsberg, Frederick William I of Prussia, William IV of Orange, Anne of Hannover, Frederick II of PrussiaAbstract
This paper presents an hitherto unnoticed file at the Prussian Secret State Archives, Berlin, which sheds new light on an amber game box kept at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: The precious object was commissioned by King Frederick William I of Prussia for Anne of Hanover, the wife of William IV of Orange, in the summer of 1738. It was produced by the Königsberg amber craftsmen Johann Bernhard Welpendorf, Jacob Suhr, Johann Georg Bull, Ertmann Hömcke, and a master named Zieloska. Departing from this discovery, the paper traces Welpendorf and Suhr’s participation in two additional royal Prussian commissions of the 1740s: a mirror frame for Empress Elizabeth of Russia’s Amber Room and a large altar for an unnamed Catholic prince. Based on the Rijksmuseum game box, tentative attributions of further amber objects to Königsberg in the 1730s and 1740s are proposed.
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References
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