An engraved silver brandy bowl

An engraved silver brandy bowl

Of octagonal form, the sides engraved with oval, stylised cartouches framing personifications of the Five Senses, Hearing, Sight, Taste, Smell and Touch, and two cartouches enclosing the personifications of Faith and Love. The cast foot decorated with scrolling foliage and flowers, alternated by winged cherub masks, rising to a waisted, reeded stem, the lower part of the bowl with rope band, the pierced cast handles centred by a later coat-of-arms of Esq. William Rookes Crompton (1790 – 1871) and Emma Markham (1798 – 1875).

The bowl was offered to the Leeuwarden assay office, although the maker was active in Sneek at the time; this may have been caused because the bowl was commissioned by a Leeuwarden client.

Hidsert Jans Lauswolt was born circa 1635 as the son of Joannes Jans Lauswolt and Bontie Idses, probably at Beetsterzwaag. From his native town he arrived in Heerenveen in 1666. On 2 December of that year he was accepted as a member of the guild. ‘To Mr Hidsert Jans Lauswolt is paid nineteen car. guilder and 7 stuivers 8 p. (Aen mr. Hidsert Jans Lauswolt betaelt negentien car.gl. 7 st. 8.p (Oud-rechterlijk Archief Schoterland, 99, fol.461).

He married for the first time in Heerenveen, on 23 February 1667 to Maria Jans Coppens. He married a second time on 3 October 1679 to Eelkjen Pieters from Sneek. In 1682 he entered the gold- and silversmith guild in that city. He married a third time on 26 April  1691 to Ancke Cornelis Pophornstra, also in Sneek. On 27 May 1715 he signed a deed, albeit with an unsteady hand, in which he renounced his share in the lafiremill (City Archive Sneek, inv. n° 993).

His output includes:

a communion beaker, date letter R (1668); a marriage beaker, date letter V (1671); a communion dish, date letter H (1660; n° 223 in the 1927 exhibition catalogue Friesch Zilver, where wrongly dated 1681); a brandy bowl, no date letter; a spoon, no other marks except a maker’s mark; a serpentine beaker with silver mounts, without other marks (catalogue 1927, n° 27).