Dutch silver salts

About This Project

Dutch silver salts

Wilhelmus Angenendt

Amsterdam, 1779 and 1790

134 grams; 5 cm high

These triangular shaped silver salts with cut-corners, engraved with a lozenge motif on top, are fitted with blue glass bowls, which are hung in circular openings. The silver frame is open worked with a central band with a plait motif. The salts are raised on three shaped hoof feet. Fully marked at the reverse; the maker’s mark on the frame rim and control mark of 1795 for Leiden on the exterior of the frame.

The silversmith

In 1737 Wilhelmus Angenendt was born in Büderich Moers, near Duisburg and Wesel in Germany.. He was the son of van Wenceslaus by his wife Christina Ingenlandt. Wilhelmus left Germany for Amsterdam, where he became an apprentice in Johannes Schiotling’s silver workshop. He was the only catholic there. In 1770 he became a master-silversmith himself, established his workshop in Warmoesstraat in Amsterdam and in 1772 he married Catharina Gaardeman. In 1798 he closed his workshop and opted for a career in the army. Thus he left for the Dutch Antilles, where he died in 1817.

Angenendt was a productive silversmith, specialising in service work, of which three items are in the collection of Museum Boymans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam: a table bell, a jug and an inkstand. Also worth mentioning is a silver-gilt Thora finial in the Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, made by Angenendt in 1775, one of his earlier works.

For the design of these salts Angenendt might have been inspired by his fellow guild members Martinus Logerath and Cornelis Stolting, The design of the stands of the waterkettles they made in 1772 and 1773 is rather similar the design of these salts. It is likely that Logerath started off with this design, followed by Schiotling and Angenendt. Angenendt used this model while working for Schiotling. Schiotling made three waterkettles in 1778 and 1790, whose stands are of similar design.

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Associate literature:

-K.A. Citroen, Amsterdam silversmiths and their marks, Amsterdam,1975

-Tent. Cat. J. Verbeek, Johannes Schiotling, een Amsterdamse zilversmid (1730-1799) en zijn kring, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 1976, cat. nr. 57

-J.R. ter Molen, Zilver, Rotterdam, 1994, cat. nrs. 102, 103, 112; p. 618.

-J. R. de Lorm, Amsterdams Goud en Zilver, Zwolle, 1999