Pair of gravyboats
Not on view
Modest though these sauceboats seem in both scale and form, their simplicity was planned to suggest the classical askos, a container for liquids. In antiquity the askos was made from a whole goatskin and had, naturally, a swelling, bulging shape and a drawnup neck, all in one piece. Already in antiquity the form was mimicked in metal. The sauceboats are thus examples of the arrival in silver of the Neoclassical taste, which not long before in England had captured the interest of architects and their clients. The feet and handles, however, are carryovers from the earlier Rococo style.
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