7ème tenture - 14 pièces - 13ème pièce, atelier Neilson - cinquième alentour sur fond de damas cramoisi
Alentours de : Jean-Baptiste Blain de Fontenay

Although intended to furnish Marie-Antoinette’s grand cabinet intérieur at the château de Versailles during the winter months, the chair and the rest of the set were removed in 1783, when the grand cabinet intérieur was redecorated and placed in the queen’s billiard room on the floor above. Sold during the French Revolution, the entire set of furniture was acquired by the American statesman Gouverneur Morris, who served as minister of the United States in France from 1792 to 1794. The pieces were subsequently sent to Morrisania, Morris’s country estate in the Bronx.

The goldsmith designed this innovative, even forward-looking, vessel to serve mulled wine, a popular spiced drink. The beverage was prepared by placing spices on the slightly funnel-shaped filter of the decanter and then pouring hot wine over them. The inscriptions on the medallions applied to either side of the flattened round body may refer to two weddings. One inscription, G. BETHLEN GERGELY/G. KENDEFFI RACHEL/1779, may mark the union of the decanter’s recipients; the other inscription, BÁNFI SUSANNA/KENDEFI GÁBOR/A O 1742, perhaps records the marriage of the bride’s parents. There is a discrepancy between the goldsmith’s presumed death in 1772 and the applied date of 1779. It is possible that the guild allowed the master’s widow to continue his workshop after his death as was often the case.LiteratureCatalogue of Fine European Silver. Sale cat., Sotheby’s, Geneva, November 10, 1981, p. 68, no. 172.Judit H. Kolba. Hungarian Silver: The Nicolas M. Salgo Collection. London, 1996, p. 120, no. 97.ExhibitedRégi ezüstkiállításának leíró lajstroma. Exh. cat. edited by Károly Csányi. Országos Magyar Iparművészeti Múzeum. Budapest, 1927, pp. 46–47, no. 375.Erdély régi művészeti emlékeinek kiállítása az Iparművészeti múzeumban / Ausstellung alten Kunstgewerbes aus Siebenbürgen. Exh. cat. Országos Magyar Iparművészeti Múzeum. Budapest, 1931, p. 24, no. 88.ReferencesElemér Kőszeghy. Magyarországi ötvösjegyek a középkortól 1867-ig / Merkzeichen der Goldschmiede Ungarns vom Mittelalter bis 1867. Budapest, 1936, nos. 982 [town mark], 1005 [maker’s mark].A similar decanter is owned by the Prince of Liechtenstein (see Johann Kräftner, ed., Der Fürst als Sammler: Neuerwerbungen unter Hans-Adam II. von und zu Liechtenstein. Vienna, 2010, pp. 144–145, no. 57).[Wolfram Koeppe 2015]