Amber Treasures from the Baltic Sea 16th - 18th century

The material gleams and glows, seduces and fascinates: rarer on the banks of the Seine than on those of the Baltic Sea, amber certainly deserved this exhibition as beautiful as it is learned, which unfolds in the beautiful Neue Kammern of the Kugel gallery. Fitted out by decorator Alain Demachy and inaugurated in autumn 2017, these spaces, skilfully transformed into a cabinet of curiosities, are the ideal setting for the fifty or so pieces assembled over several decades. Alexis and Nicolas Kugel assure us: this is the exhibition that required the most delicate preparation. After goldsmiths from Strasbourg (see article), clocks from Augsburg (see article) and - more recently - Neapolitan tortoiseshell (see article), the Kugel gallery leads its visitors on the road to amber, the gold of the North that appeared on the first printed maps of the Prussian coast in the 16th century. Specialists or readers of the recent book by Pierre-Ange Salvadori know that the scientific name for Baltic amber - succinus - was already indicated on the strip of land separating Danzig and Königsberg [1] in the famous Carta marina of 1539 drawn up by the last Catholic archbishop of Sweden, Olaus Magnus. Amber, however, derives from an Arabic term, and its origin aroused every kind of fantasy until the 17th-century, when the Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonossov definitively demonstrated that it was a resin secreted by trees and then fossilized. The exhibition’s rich catalog also tells the story of amber harvesting, the role of the Teutonic Knights and the fate of coastal populations forced to collect amber after every storm without being allowed to keep any, on pain of fine or even death in the 16th century.

1. View of the exhibition "Amber Treasures from the Baltic Sea 16th - 18th century"
Photo: Guillaume Benoit

See the image in its page

2. View of the exhibition "Amber Treasures from the Baltic Sea 16th - 18th century"
Photo: Guillaume Benoit

See the image in its page

Fortunately for them, visitors to the Kugel gallery’s exhibition are unlikely to experience more than a touch of Stendhal syndrome as they wander among the marvels so skilfully arranged in a darkness conducive to contemplation (ill. 1) of these treasures of generally prestigious provenance, since the Borgheses and Rothschilds are mentioned on the labels accompanying the works. Very often made in Danzig or Königsberg, the two major centers of production in the 16th and 17th-centuries, they were sometimes linked to artists, some of whom even signed their pieces. The objects on display cover a highly varied typology, clearly presented in the catalog, which analyzes mugs and chests. Among the latter, we must confess to a particular fondness for the example (ill. 2) which belonged successively to Alphonse and then to Édouard de Rothschild and on which sits an irresistible snail in the round: it can be attributed to Georg Schreiber, Königsberg’s most talented amber…