FRIEDRICH BERGENFELDT (1768-1822) - Receive artist alerts » - More items from this artist »

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gilt and patinated bronze

17.00inch high    (  43.18 cm high)

With gilt anthemion motif around the neck, the handles are fashioned as a scroll and take the form of sea creatures spouting water, with a ram’s head decoration at the top and further decoration at the base. A gilt bird is perched on the top of the lip, with a lion’s head and a flower underneath the lip. The ewers are of tapering form, with a central lion motif encircled by gilt bands, and are supported by a base of high gadrooning which stands on a small waisted gilt stem with gilt capitals and circular feet. Both ewers are mounted on square marble plinths.

Friedrich Bergenfeldt was born in 1768 in Westphalia, Germany and moved to St Petersburg in the 1790s. He worked first in the atelier of the bronzier Yan Aoustin and then with Charles Dreyer. He then left St. Petersburg, possibly for Paris, returning to Russia after the death of Paul I in 1801 and establishing his workshop on the Fontanka Embankment. His advertisements in the local newspapers announce the sale of ‘all manner of bronze ornaments such as – vases, candelabras, cassolettes, girandoles, chandeliers, veilleuses etc. in the antique taste and of a quality equal to that of French bronzes.’ He collaborated with Heinrich Gambs, supplying many of the gilt-bronzes for Gambs’ furniture, and died on 17th May 1822 (Sytchev, op.cit.).