DUTCH SILVER COFFEE URN
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Dutch silver coffee urn
Paulus van Beugen
Bois le Duc, 1777
1006 grams all-in; 30,5 cm high
The spirally- fluted baluster body is raised on three scroll and foliate supports. The domed cover with ventilation hole has a black wood finial. The spout is shaped as a dolphin. The scroll wood handle terminates in a silver scroll. Fully marked at the base.
A Bossche coffee urn is quite rare. Only two others are known, one from 1707 and a coffee urn from 1764 made by Balthasar le Heu. It is seldom that a silver object can be traced in auction catalogues. However, this coffee urn could be traced in a 1916 auction at Frederik Muller in Amsterdam. The rather brief descriptions in the catalogues of the time are usually a puzzle. The hallmarks are described as “un arbre couronné, lettre C et les initiales de l’ orfèvre P.V.B.” . No doubt these refer to this coffee urn. Unfortunately, there is no reference to the owner who sent in this coffee urn in 1916.
The silversmith Paulus van Beugen was baptized on January 29, 1745 in Den Bosch (Bois-le Duc) as the son of Wernerus and Deliana Catharina Kerckhof. He married Maria Johanna Kivits on 3 August 1766 and the couple had eleven children. Paulus was registered with the gold and silversmiths’ guild of Den Bosch on 5 June 1765 and lived on the market in Den Bosch. He used several maker’s marks. These were stamped on the inculpation plates of 1765 and 1807 of the Den Bosch guild. In 1787, during the plundering of Den Bosch the silversmith’s shop on the market was disadvantaged for ƒ 36,000 to ƒ 40,000. In March 1807 Paulus was registered as a cashier in gold and silver works and was an assay master of the guild in Den Bosch for six years. Paulus had nine different pupils in his workshop from 1765 to 1786. He himself descended from a family of silversmiths. The family comprised seven silversmiths in the 17th and 18th centuries. Johan van Beugen (1635-1704) is probably the oldest silversmith of the family. He also had his workshop on the market in Den Bosch. Paulus died at the age of 79, on December 28, 1824 in Den Bosch.
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