A pair of Dutch silver sauceboats

A pair of Dutch silver sauceboats

Johannes Schiotling

Amsterdam, 1766

993 grams in total; circa 20 cm long, 10,5 cm wide, circa 12 cm high

The sauce boats are raised on three scroll supports that are headed by a leaf ornament. The body with wide lip and double scroll silver handle has a tied reeded border and is engraved on both sides with a crowned mirror monogram A. Fully marked on the reverse of the body. Also struck with a 1795 control mark for Amsterdam.

The silversmith Johannes Schiotling (1730-1799) was born in Göteborg, Sweden. At the age of seventeen he committed himself to a six-year training with Olof Fernlof, a master silversmith. Around 1760 Schiotling arrived in Amsterdam. Like so many young silversmiths from abroad at that time, he was drawn to the tolerant and wealthy city of Amsterdam, where numerous foreign craftsmen could flourish. In 1762 he enrolled in the guild and one year later he married Margaretha Sophia Janssen from Aurich. Her brother Johann Diedrich Janssen was a formal witness at the wedding and in 1766 he joined Schiotling’s workshop, together with three other silversmiths: Jan Arend, Wilhelmus Angenendt and Christoffel Mittscherlich. The latter was an excellent chaser. In 1771 Schiotling bought a house at Kalverstraat, opposite Heiligeweg in Amsterdam, where he opened a shop, a ‘kashouderij’. His workshop remained in Egelantierstraat. Schiotling’s two sons, Johannes Hendrik and Andreas also became silversmiths. After Schiotling’s death in 1799, his widow Margaretha and his son Andreas took over the workshop. Christopher Mittscherlich made a lovely double portrait of the couple in wax, which is now in the collection of the Amsterdam Museum and used to be in the Hartcourt Collections until 1993.

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