Ornamental Silverware Designs

'Entwürfe für Prunkgefäße in Silber mit Gold - BSB Cod.icon. 199 Augsburg oder Nürnberg 1560 - 1565' is available online from Münchener Digitalisierungszentrum. About two thirds or three quarters of the album's illustrations - modestly background cleaned - have been posted above.

This album of ceremonial silverware/tableware, displaying an imaginative and adventurous use of Mannerist ornament, including anthropomorphic, marine, grotesque, fantasy, monster and classical mythology motifs, has been attributed, in modern times, to Erasmus Hornick (early 1500s - 1583).

Erasmus Hornick: "Flemish goldsmith, printmaker and draughtsman, active in Germany. He trained as a goldsmith in Antwerp and was probably already established in Augsburg by 1555, when he married Afra Haug, who was from a prominent Augsburg patrician family. Between 1559 and 1566 he was active in Nuremberg. Because of his reputation as a goldsmith, Nuremberg's city council honoured him in 1559 with citizenship, and in 1563 he was admitted to the goldsmiths' guild. After giving up his Nuremberg citizenship in 1566, Hornick presumably returned to Augsburg, where he is recorded in 1568, in 1570 (when he remarried) and again in 1578." [source]

• Background summary regarding the manuscript (in German) [translation]
• The spectacular jewellery etchings below come from a suite of seventeen design prints at the British Museum (search on 'hornick' under people, click images box at the bottom and then click 'Print made by' on the results page)
• Ornamental Prints Online has about twenty further examples of Hornick's silverware/tableware designs (just search on his name, top left).
• Monstrous Animals: Hanging Animal Pendants of the Late Renaissance by Alexandra Ceely.
• See also: one, two.