Amber collection at Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen (Royal Danish Collection)

Elzbieta Mierzwinska*

FOTO GALLERY Click to enlarge

The collection at Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen includes a large and very interesting collection of amber artefacts. These works are not grouped in a single exhibition dedicated solely to amber, but are dispersed among other magnificent treasures assembled at the Castle. The specificity of the Rosenborg collection and the way it is presented is not without historical reason. Rosenborg Castle was built in a Late Renaissance style in the early 17 th century and was the royal residence for almost 100 years. When Frederick IV moved to the newly-built Frederiksberg Palace north of Copenhagen in 1710, Rosenborg became a repository for the Danish national treasures: regalia and family collections of furniture, painting, artistic handicraft and jewels. In 1833, King Frederick VI decided to turn Rosenborg Castle into a museum to be open to the general public. His collections were arranged in chronological order and supplemented by works from the Royal Kunstkamera. This way, Rosenborg Castle became the richest museum in Denmark. No changes have been made to it since then and it still belongs to the Crown.

The beginnings of the collection

The Danish kings began to collect amber artefacts when, in 1585, King Frederick II received a gift of 18 silver platters with amber bases from his niece Sophia, Margravine of Brandenburg. The set was the joint work of two Königsberg masters: goldsmith Andreas Knieffel and amber jeweller Stentzel Schmitt. Over the ensuing years, many members of the Danish royal family accumulated amber artefacts in their own private art collections. It was these collections that formed the basis for the Royal Danish Collection at Rosenborg Castle . The largest collection, with over 200 items, belonged to Queen Sophia Magdalene, wife of Christian VI.

The earlier amber artefacts at Rosenborg Castle came mostly from purchases and gifts and were usually of Gdansk or Königsberg origin. These include a 16-arm chandelier with an amber sphere at its centre decorated with ivory figurines, given to Frederick III in 1653 by Frederick William of Brandenburg , a mug in a gilded silver frame from the mid-1600s and two crucifixes placed on ornamental plinths.

The creators of the amber works

In later years, one of the distinctive features of amber collecting at the Danish royal court was that many items were made in-house by specially employed artists. Gottfried Wolfram, who spent his apprenticeship at the workshop of another Gdansk amber jeweller Nicolaus Turau, was the first to arrive. He was on Queen Charlotte Amalia's service as early as in 1683; and the queen was a keen collector. In 1691, Wolfram became the royal lathe hand and worked as such until 1699, when King Christian V died. Over this period, Wolfram made several amber pieces at royal request; the works attributed to him include several coffers, including one large and exquisitely made coffer decorated with ivory relief and figurines of Roman warriors on its corners, as well as a magnificent mirror frame, richly engraved and sculpted. Wolfram is more commonly known as the first contractor of the amber cabinet of Frederick I, the King in Prussia. He was employed for the execution of the project, which eventually became the famous Amber Room, in Berlin in 1701-1707.

Receipts and royal archives show that several other craftsmen, ivory sculptors who also worked in amber, worked at the Danish court at the same time as Wolfram. Perhaps one of them was Wilhelm Heinrich Wessel, who specialised in ivory.

The heyday of amber jewellery craft in Copenhagen

n contrast to other European centres, the amber handicraft at the court in Copenhagen had its heyday in the 18 th century. New craftsmen were employed to work in amber, even though they usually specialised in other crafts. These included Diderich de Thurah, Niels Nielsen and three artists from Germany : sculptors Lorenz Natter and Lorenz Spengler and draughtsman and painter Marcus Tuscher. Thurah made an amber model of the warship Anna Sophie and a set of writing tools of amber and tortoise shell. He also designed lathes with which the young crown prince and King Christian VI himself made works of amber and ivory. An example of the monarch's works is the lid of a gilded jewellery box sculpted out of amber in the shape of rose petals. German artists played a significant role at the royal court. The king often posed for Natter, who made several depictions of the monarch in gemstones (intaglio and cameos). Natter's only known work in amber is therefore a bust of Christian VI, a small full-form sculpture on a plinth. The greatest number of magnificent amber pieces were made by Lorenz Spengler based on designs by Marcus Tuscher. Spengler arrived in Copenhagen in 1743 and only two years later received the lucrative post of royal lathe hand. Being an ivory sculptor by profession, Spengler quickly mastered the secrets of work in amber, as such items would be ordered by his powerful patrons. In 1748, Spengler opened his own workshop in the city and employed many apprentices, the most famous of them being J. E. Bauert from Sweden . Spengler taught his craft to many members of the royal family. The most talented students proved to be Queen Louise of Mecklenburg-Güstrow herself and her nephews, Hessian Dukes Wilhelm, Carl and Friedrich of Kassel, who came to the Copenhagen court to get an education.

The authorship of the amber items is confirmed by receipts to Spengler's name preserved in the court archives. His most important works include various kinds of receptacles with fanciful shapes and rococo ornamentation: flasks, cups, goblets and bottles, two cupid figurines on plinths of green-painted ivory, symbolising strength and wisdom, a medallion with a portrait of Christian VI, a large chandelier of amber gilded bronze, made for Frederick V and Queen Louise and a magnificent chess set. All these masterly works can be seen in the rooms of Rosenborg Castle, where they are exhibited among the other treasures of the Royal Danish Collection.

Notably, many of the most attractive items in the Copenhagen amber collection were made in the 1750s when the fashion for amber was already a thing of the past, amber ceased to be collected and the amber guilds in Baltic towns were in decline. The Danish royal family's love for the mineral and the fact that they employed court artists to work in it led to the creation of works unseen in other collections, rococo works with soft, fanciful, asymmetrical lines, decorated with relief with typical rococo ornamentation.

The amber collection at Rosenborg is special also because all its items come from the collection of the Royal Family: they were purchased by its members or received by them as gifts, made to order by court artists or even hand-made by the royalty themselves. The amber artefacts assembled in Copenhagen make up one of the most magnificent collections of its kind in the world.

* The author is the Senior Curator of the Amber Collection at the Castle Museum in Malbork