Rare and exceptional silver table fountain - Lot 290

Rare and exceptional silver table fountain with 3 taps on a tripod scrolled base. The 12-sided, pan-shaped body is decorated with foliage and interlacing motifs on an amati ground, repeated on the lid, which ends in a flowering fruit-shaped socket. The side handles are decorated with curves and counter-curves. Liège work by Jean-François Knaeps, 1719-1720. H: 32 cm (old restorations) It's worth returning to the problem of the origin of these prestigious pieces of goldsmith's art, which Professor Brassinne, out of an excess of chauvinism, had presented as an exclusively Liège model. This was to ignore the prototypes from the Netherlands - Amsterdam of course, but also Leeuwarden, as early as 1700, for the earliest example with three taps (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam inv.: R.B.K. 15641) - as well as the later productions from other Belgian provinces that recent bibliography has highlighted. The term "table fountain" has the double advantage over the old term "three-tap coffeepot" of being elegant and, above all, of not prejudging a use whose exclusivity has never been established. It's worth remembering that at the 1881 and 1905 exhibitions, these objects were shown under the name of "three-tap kettle". Jean-François Knaeps' kettle described here is five years younger than the first piece attested in Liège (Brassinne, pl. 161). Of the same type, but more slender and with a very neat engraving, it is the finest example of this very first generation of Liège fountains. Source: L'orfevrerie civile ancienne du Pays de Liège.