posted 03-16-2005 08:59 PM            

Case in point: recently while at a local university library, I was digging through some back issues of the German art magazine Weltkunst looking for some information on a particular painting exhibition. I had no luck with that, but I did come across an article on the silver of the small Bavarian city of Eichstätt.

It turns out the silver mark for Eichstätt is an acorn, taken from the municipal arms which depict an oak tree behind fortified walls. (Eiche/Eichel = Oak/Acorn). And lo and behold, there among the handful of silversmiths from Eichstätt is Jakob Schmadl, son of the sculptor Franz Xaver Schmadl. He married Barbara Nisler on 15 Jul 1786 and died in 1839.

The article catalogued four works by him dating from 1790 to 1830, and one - a censer conserved at the Catholic Guardian Angel Chruch in Eichstätt - bears the exact maker's mark on this beaker. Schmadl was the court goldsmith to the prince-bishops of the Holy Roman Empire who ruled the city until 1802; the King of Bavaria later gave the town to Eugène de Beauharnais in 1817.

So there you have it: late 18th/early 19th C., by Jakob Schmadl, court goldsmith of Eichstätt, Bavaria, Germany.