Auction 1265 on Friday, 16th May 2025 Decorative Arts

On 26 February 1869, craftsmen demolishing a patrician house in Regensburg made a spectacular discovery: a wooden chest containing precious Renaissance silver artefacts was uncovered under a staircase. The chest had been hidden there beneath a step by a previous owner of the house, the merchant Georg Hoffmann, in around 1630 during the turmoil of the Thirty Years' War. Among other things, it contained 20 gilded drinking vessels of the highest quality.

This so-called ‘Regensburg silver find’ was all over the news for quite some time. The silver treasure was inventoried by two art historians, large-format albumen prints of the columbine and grape goblets, the lidded tankards and novelty vessels were sold for 30 kreutzers each, and a ten-day exhibition of the silver items in Regensburg town hall attracted more than 5,400 paying visitors. The entrance fee of 6 kreutzers was donated to disadvantaged citizens of Regensburg.

The owner of the now demolished patrician house sold the entire find the following year to the Leipzig collector Eugen Felix, from whose possession various pieces found their way onto the art market more than ten years later. An early Regensburg double goblet, an Augsburg tankard and cover and a so-called maiden's cup are now kept in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

A large part of the collection was sold at auction in 1886 by J. M. Herberle (H. Lempertz Söhne) in Cologne - including a gilded ship goblet made by the Nuremberg master Tobias Wolff in around 1620, and this same piece is now being offered again at Lempertz on 16th May, 139 years later. It is listed under number 5 in the 1869 inventory:

'A table ornament in the form of a goelette (sailing ship) with billowing sails and rigging, containing an armed crew, partially enamelled (...)'

Early photographs from the year of the discovery allow for a clear identification of the goblet, which could only recently be attributed to the Regensburg silver find.  

Ship goblets reached the peak of their popularity in around 1600. The ship symbolises a community of destiny or - also in the entrepreneurial sense - daring. Read more directly, it symbolises the means by which European merchants, such as those in Nuremberg, achieved their great prosperity through global trade. 

Tobias Wolff, a native of Berlin, had settled in Nuremberg and passed his master craftsman's examination in 1604. In the following years, he increasingly specialised in the production of ship goblets. Examples of his work can be found today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and other important collections. His magnificent ship goblet, originating from the Regensburg silver find and currently housed in a German private collection, will be auctioned in Cologne on 16th May with an estimate of € 100,000 to € 120,000.

I would be happy to answer any questions and provide print-ready images.

With kind regards,

Jan Bykowski
Press and Public Relations
info@lempertz.com
Tel. 0221 925729 -57