Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 30. (Budapest, 2016)

Edit DARABOS: Altera Theca continens.A Research Into Historical Leather Cases made for Esterhazy Treasury Items

which poses questions arising in connection with the date of the item it was designed to contain.36 Compared with the date of the object itself, the case for the cup, produced by Marx Merzenbach between 1663 and 1666, bears tools that are surprisingly archaic, none of which are of a kind used in the Baroque age.37 The leather covering is divided by blind tooled lines into a pattern of triangles and rhombuses, containing rosettes in a variety of sizes, while the bottom of the case is fringed by friezes of tendrils.38

There are not many cases that bear individual tools, or at least ones that appear on only a few objects and are typical of the middle, second half or end of the seventeenth century, or in a couple of cases, the beginning of the eighteenth century.

The case for the Barrel-shaped vessel - like the rock crystal object it contained - is severely damaged, with parts missing, although the gold tooling on the leather covering can be clearly discerned.39 The decorative pointillé tooling, consisting of dotted lines and circles, is not found on any other cases in the group. According to the inventory made by Károly Csányi in 1923, the object originated in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. We cannot state for certain that the case was made at the same time as the object, but the nature of the tools and the arrangement of the pattern would imply a date little earlier than the

6. Case for a dolphin-shaped rock crystal bowl, Esterházy Privatstiftung, Eisenstadt Photo by Andreas Hafenscher

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