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All About Amber, with Laura Kugel
30 Plays2 years ago
Amber gameboards became very popular in northern Europe at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and the subject of this week’s episode represents the very best of type. A symphony of richly figured amber, silver, and silver gilt, the Danzig-made board was used to play chess and the ancient Roman strategy game known today as Three Men’s Morris. It’s one of many amber objets d’art from the Baltic region on display at the redoubtable Galerie Kugel in Paris for the exhibition Amber: Treasures from the Baltic. Curious Objects host Benjamin Miller gets an inside look at how such curios were crafted, and the lore that surrounds the gameboard’s decorative themes and provenance, courtesy of Laura Kugel, sixth generation dealer at the family-owned and -operated gallery.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Curious Objects' Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Curious Objects brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller and I have a treat for you today.
00:00:16
Speaker
On this podcast, we talk about old things, objects that originate decades or centuries or even millennia in the past.
00:00:23
Speaker
We've sometimes ventured as far as prehistory, where the stories told by objects can be incredibly difficult to extract.
00:00:30
Speaker
Yet today we are going to go back further, much, much further, across a timescale far longer than the existence of human beings.
What is the significance of the featured amber object?
00:00:40
Speaker
Because while in one sense today's curious object is merely 350 years old, in another sense its true age is dozens of millions of years.
00:00:52
Speaker
And that's because it's carved from amber, one of the oldest organic materials in the world, which we all know, of course, thanks to Jurassic Park and the dinosaur blood preserved in a mosquito inside a piece of amber.
00:01:04
Speaker
But even outside of fiction, it's an extraordinary material with an extraordinary history, both as a natural material and in the roles it's taken in human culture.
Overview of Gallery Cugel's Amber Exhibition
00:01:13
Speaker
And it's fitting that for a conversation about one of the world's oldest materials, I'm talking with a, well, a young representative of one of the world's oldest and most revered galleries, Gallery Cougall of Paris.
00:01:25
Speaker
Cougall dates back in one form or another for some 200 years across now six generations of dealers and fine objects.
00:01:34
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Today, they are known as leading experts across numerous fields of fine and decorative arts, with special focus on medieval, renaissance and early modern works.
00:01:44
Speaker
From now until December 16th, they are exhibiting an unparalleled collection of over 50 works made of amber, which the Cugels have acquired over decades.
How did Laura Cugel's family influence the gallery?
00:01:55
Speaker
The exhibition is accompanied by a book which uses this collection alongside great objects from museums around the world to seek new scholarly and aesthetic understanding of amber as a medium for art.
00:02:07
Speaker
My guest is Laura Cugel, the sixth generation of Cugel Art Dealers, and I'm delighted to have the chance to talk with her about the meaning and power of amber, its extraordinary value, its role in trade and diplomacy,
00:02:22
Speaker
And to dive deep into the story behind one piece from this exhibition, a wonderful game board carved in amber.
00:02:28
Speaker
Laura, thanks for joining
Engaging with the Podcast Community
00:02:30
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me.
00:02:30
Speaker
Thank you, Ben.
00:02:31
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
00:02:34
Speaker
Do remember that you can see images of this curious object and so many others at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
00:02:42
Speaker
And of course, gallerycougal.com.
00:02:45
Speaker
And if you have comments or ideas for future episodes, I'd love to hear them via email at curiousobjectspodcast at gmail.com or on Instagram at Objective Interest.
What are Laura Cugel's personal interests?
00:02:55
Speaker
And if you're not already following or subscribed to curious objects on your podcast app, take a second to do that now to make sure you don't miss upcoming episodes.
00:03:03
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It really does make a difference.
00:03:05
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Also, if you leave us a rating and a review, I'm so grateful to those of you who have taken the time to do that.
00:03:11
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And with all that said, Laura Cugel, are you ready for some rapid fire questions?
00:03:16
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Still ready.
00:03:17
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Okay.
00:03:18
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What is the oldest object that you personally own?
00:03:21
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I'm the proud owner of a Gogot.
00:03:24
Speaker
I don't know if you're familiar with them.
00:03:27
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So Gogots are sandstone formations that originate in Fontainebleau, just outside Paris, and that much like amber date about 30 to 40 million years ago.
00:03:39
Speaker
They're kind of bulbous and take a whole bunch of abstract shapes.
00:03:44
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I think one of the biggest example is in Washington's Smithsonian Museum.
00:03:48
Speaker
So you can go visit one of the world's largest Gogots.
00:03:52
Speaker
That's definitely the oldest.
Exploring Laura's Favorite Objects and Cultural Insights
00:03:53
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Fantastic.
00:03:54
Speaker
Okay, there is an asteroid headed for Earth and you've been placed on the escape pod.
00:03:59
Speaker
What one object or artwork are you bringing?
00:04:02
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One of our specialties are snuff boxes, mostly French 18th century, but one maker from Saxony called the Joan Christian Neuber, which you may know, made very, very beautiful little gold boxes with about 50 or 60 slabs of stones and marbles from around Dresden.
00:04:20
Speaker
And they're called miniature mineralogical cabinets.
00:04:24
Speaker
And I think this would be a nice thing to take with me to remind myself of the beauty of Earth.
00:04:29
Speaker
What is the single most valuable object or artwork that you've ever physically touched?
00:04:35
Speaker
That's a tricky one because we get to touch and handle so many great objects.
00:04:39
Speaker
I would say maybe the perk of handling museum works behind the scenes sometimes, which are invaluable in a sense, is extra special.
00:04:51
Speaker
So you've been banned from your current field, which is very broad.
00:04:56
Speaker
So this might be a tough question for you, but you have to pick a new specialty outside of what you're doing right now.
00:05:00
Speaker
What's it going to be?
What are common misconceptions about art dealing?
00:05:02
Speaker
I'd be a video game designer.
00:05:04
Speaker
Really?
00:05:05
Speaker
Yeah, I love video games.
00:05:07
Speaker
It's kind of nerdy, but somehow when they're really great, they're one of the most beautiful art forms, which may shock your listeners in some way or another.
00:05:16
Speaker
But if you think about it, people create worlds and then invite other people to interact with them.
00:05:22
Speaker
What's your favorite video game?
00:05:25
Speaker
At the moment, I have a soft spot for the oddly named Assassin's Creed series because I really appreciate how historically accurate they can be.
00:05:33
Speaker
And actually in one of them, the bad guy is François-Thomas Germain, my favorite 18th century silversmith.
00:05:40
Speaker
No idea how he got picked by Ubisoft to be the main character in one of those games, but that was thoroughly entertaining to me.
00:05:48
Speaker
Wow, I'm going to have to check this out.
00:05:49
Speaker
Yeah, you do.
00:05:53
Speaker
What would you say is the movie that has the most interesting depiction of material culture?
00:06:00
Speaker
Definitely the Harry Potter series, even though all these objects were created somehow by JK Rowling, I guess the prop people had to make them come to life.
00:06:10
Speaker
And one of my favorites is one of the professor owns an hourglass whose time goes more or less quickly, depending on the quality of your guest conversation.
00:06:20
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So maybe it's something to think of for your podcast guests.
00:06:26
Speaker
Sounds like a torture device.
00:06:28
Speaker
What's your favorite museum to visit?
00:06:31
Speaker
The obvious answer, I guess, would be the Louvre, which is on our doorsteps.
00:06:36
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And I go there quite regularly.
00:06:38
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But the more personal answer is the Victoria and Albert in London, where I worked and studied for many years.
00:06:44
Speaker
That's a popular choice.
00:06:45
Speaker
What's one misconception that people have about your field that you'd like to correct?
Laura's Journey in Art and Recommended Readings
00:06:52
Speaker
I think the biggest misconception is that it takes a lot of prior knowledge to enjoy it and look at it and start learning about it, which is absolutely not true.
00:07:00
Speaker
And I'm sure we'll delve into that later.
00:07:03
Speaker
What one artist or crafts person living or dead would you invite to dinner?
00:07:09
Speaker
Well, I had this conversation with a good friend of mine recently, and I took it extremely seriously.
00:07:14
Speaker
And at the end, we both decided to go for Leonardo da Vinci, kind of a cliche answer, but because I guess he would be so curious about everything we would describe of our current world, it would be a much more back and forth conversation.
00:07:28
Speaker
I imagine the hourglass would be turning very quickly over that dinner.
00:07:33
Speaker
That's right.
00:07:34
Speaker
What's the first object or artwork that you remember falling in love with?
00:07:39
Speaker
My first kind of art moment that I truly remember shook me was when my grandmother took me as a 16 or 17 year old to an exhibition in Paris called Vienna 1900 with Gustav Klint, Egon Schiller, Kokoschka and all those painters.
00:07:55
Speaker
I think it was the first time that I truly appreciated art beyond the image in front of me.
00:08:01
Speaker
What's one book that you would recommend for an amateur to read to start to understand your field?
00:08:08
Speaker
Joseph Dubin's biography entitled The Most Spectacular Art Dealers of All Time.
00:08:13
Speaker
It's short and sweet, written by a former New Yorker writer.
00:08:17
Speaker
And it's the first book that I was given by my father when I joined the business.
What are Laura's recent art-related discoveries?
00:08:21
Speaker
What did you do on your last international trip aside from Meet Me?
00:08:26
Speaker
Yeah, I met you in New York for the first time, so we could plan a bit of this conversation.
00:08:32
Speaker
I was in New York for a few days visiting the auctions, but the best moment was paying a little visit to a recent acquisition of the Metro
00:08:41
Speaker
Metropolitan Museum made at our gallery of large scale white mice and porcelain bust of a man who was the jester at the court of Saxony.
00:08:50
Speaker
It's now installed in the rooms and it's really a fun object to see.
00:08:54
Speaker
He had a trick involving mice.
00:08:57
Speaker
It's still not clear if he loved them or hated them, but anyway, they're hidden all around him and there's one hanging from his mouth.
00:09:05
Speaker
And I'm absolutely thrilled that this piece ends up in a museum.
00:09:08
Speaker
Wow, I'm going to have to go look at that.
00:09:10
Speaker
What would you say is the most exciting discovery you've made in the art or decorative arts field?
00:09:17
Speaker
That's a tricky one because we make some quite regularly.
00:09:22
Speaker
The most touching recent discovery we made about provenance, we were selling about a year ago a Nautilus cup to a museum who was probing us for more information on recent provenance, specifically of the 70s.
00:09:38
Speaker
And we managed to track down the family who owned it at the time.
00:09:42
Speaker
And we found the son of the deceased former owner.
00:09:47
Speaker
And he couldn't remember where his father bought it.
00:09:50
Speaker
But about five or six days before the museum's acquisition meeting,
00:09:54
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He called us and said, I found it in his old papers, an invoice from your grandfather.
00:10:00
Speaker
And we absolutely didn't know that.
00:10:02
Speaker
So it was a very nice kind of virtuous circle and a recognition that the taste of my late grandfather who created the gallery in some sense still lives with
Setting Up the Amber Exhibition
00:10:12
Speaker
us today.
00:10:12
Speaker
That's fantastic.
00:10:14
Speaker
What's a mistake that you regret or perhaps learned from in your field?
00:10:22
Speaker
Don't get me wrong.
00:10:22
Speaker
I make little mistakes all the time and I learn from them, I hope.
00:10:27
Speaker
But to me, the worst mistake I could ever make in this job would be to damage an object.
00:10:32
Speaker
And thankfully, that has never happened yet.
00:10:35
Speaker
What was the last object or artwork that you saw that gave you shivers?
00:10:40
Speaker
I have to say we just finished installing the show just yesterday on Ember and to see all these objects placed and well lit and finally without a coat of five centimeters of dust on them was absolutely tremendous.
What makes the amber game board significant?
00:10:54
Speaker
Well, that's a fantastic segue because we're ready now, I think, to dive into our curious object today, which is a very rare and beautiful game board made of amber, of course.
00:11:05
Speaker
It was made in the 17th century in Danzig, which today is called Gdansk and is located in modern Poland on the coast of the Baltic Sea.
00:11:14
Speaker
It's a classic folding board with backgammon on the inside when it's unfolded, and then on the outside with surfaces for chess and another ancient game called Nine Men's Morris.
00:11:25
Speaker
It's complete with carved chess and backgammon pieces and dice, and each square of the chessboard is individually carved with elaborate floral designs, and then on the inside with the backgammon board are carved illustrations of merchant ships, one of which is flying the city flag of Danzig.
00:11:44
Speaker
It's an object of incredible luxury and visual enchantment.
Understanding Amber's Formation and Allure
00:11:48
Speaker
But Laura, I want to start with the material.
00:11:50
Speaker
Can you tell me what is Amber, scientifically speaking, and how is it formed?
00:11:56
Speaker
So as you already mentioned, Amber got its popular five minutes of fame in Jurassic Park movie, where I think it was introduced on a mass level for the first time to many people who sometimes mistake it for stone or other materials.
00:12:13
Speaker
So it is a fossilized tree resin from a forest that once lied where the Baltic Sea is today.
00:12:21
Speaker
Um, recent discovery as recent as last year from, um, some flora entrapped in Amber, um, point to the fact that that forest was once a tropical forest, kind of like a rain forest from, you know, like you would find in Australia, which is a little bit strange to think of when you associated with the Baltic region today.
00:12:40
Speaker
So this forest over the, uh,
00:12:42
Speaker
years and millennial was completely recovered after drastic climate change events.
00:12:48
Speaker
And so if you imagine a tree, you know, maybe wounded by some event who sat would, would get out and slowly entrap little flies or mosquitoes or ants or different bits of like
00:13:01
Speaker
leaves and other things.
00:13:04
Speaker
That's what amber was in its first form.
00:13:06
Speaker
Amberization is basically the name for this fossilization of resin that takes, again, many, many thousand years.
00:13:14
Speaker
And it comes in a variety of shades.
How has amber's value evolved historically?
00:13:17
Speaker
So again, you might associate it the most with some kind of really bright solar translucent orange, but it can be anything from as white and creamy as ivory almost all the way to really dark and opaque red.
00:13:33
Speaker
That's basically like a deep burgundy sort of color.
00:13:36
Speaker
and playing on all these different shades.
00:13:39
Speaker
All the makers from Danzig, like you mentioned, and Konigsberg, which today is Kaliningrad in Russia, which were the two main centers.
00:13:49
Speaker
All the makers played with these different shades and associated them.
00:13:52
Speaker
And here in the game board you describe, the backgammon board has white and black triangles, for lack of a better word, some with really dark amber, some with really light amber.
00:14:05
Speaker
It allows for
00:14:06
Speaker
beautiful kind of marquetry effect.
00:14:09
Speaker
So amber, of course, has been used for a very long time by artists and craftspeople.
00:14:16
Speaker
As far as we can tell from the archaeological evidence, how far back does it go?
00:14:20
Speaker
And I'm also curious about the role that amber has taken on in mythology.
00:14:25
Speaker
Yes, so I believe the earliest example of carved embers, which were basically amulets, either abstract or figurative representing animals, for instance, date back to the Neolithic period.
00:14:37
Speaker
So that is about 10 to 5,000 years BC.
00:14:42
Speaker
So they're very old.
00:14:43
Speaker
You can find some of those examples in Museum of the Baltic region and in Scandinavia and Copenhagen, for instance.
00:14:50
Speaker
a little bit like a trace of breadcrumbs, right?
00:14:53
Speaker
We find small fragments of amber discarded around the Mediterranean area, all the way to Asia, Turkey, and China from the ancient period, tracing back to, you know, at least three or 2,000 years with a very intensive trade, and therefore recognition that this material was always considered as a
00:15:15
Speaker
very high-end luxury.
Amber's Historical Value Compared to Precious Metals
00:15:17
Speaker
It came with a lot of mythological backstory, as you mentioned, the Greeks and then the Romans associated it with the sun, which is common to various cultures.
00:15:30
Speaker
The story goes that Helios, the sun god, who is not Apollo, but basically this guy was always in the shadow of Apollo since then.
00:15:38
Speaker
But anyway, Helios, whose role was to drag a chariot,
00:15:42
Speaker
around the earth each day, you know, setting the sun and then setting it down.
00:15:48
Speaker
Once got his chariot hijacked by his son who was half god, half mortal and wanted to prove his worth to his father by dragging his chariot and handling his fierce horses.
00:16:02
Speaker
Unfortunately, he couldn't quite handle them.
00:16:06
Speaker
And it is said that he drove the chariot too close to the earth, creating vast deserts and too far away from the earth, creating blizzards and terrible cold snowstorms.
00:16:17
Speaker
So much so that Jupiter, Zeus,
00:16:20
Speaker
had to strike him with his lightning to break an end to this terrible event, which might have led to Earth's uttermost destruction.
00:16:30
Speaker
So his sisters called the Hiliads, the daughters of Helios, were mourning their brother and transformed into poplar trees and their tears as they shed them slowly transformed in little droplets of amber.
00:16:44
Speaker
So it's kind of fascinating to think that even
00:16:47
Speaker
Even before it was fully understood that amber originated from trees, there is something about them in the mythological sense that was reminiscent of that.
00:16:58
Speaker
Quite mysterious to me.
00:17:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:01
Speaker
Well, also a little unnerving to think that the mythological origins of amber are rooted in a climate change story.
00:17:08
Speaker
Again.
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:17:09
Speaker
So historically, how has the value of amber compared to that of other precious materials like gold or silver?
How did the Romans trade amber?
00:17:19
Speaker
So unlike gold and silver, which were also, you know, minted for money as early as the ancient period, amber was really thought of as a luxury material in and of itself.
00:17:31
Speaker
We know that the Egyptians cared for it, you find it a lot in their tombs, you find it even in the tombs of Tutankhamun, for instance, perhaps you could assume but it's hard to know for sure that they had seen some animals entrapped in it and that
00:17:47
Speaker
you know, drew them to using it in kind of a burial sense.
00:17:51
Speaker
I don't know for sure, but it's a nice suggestions anyhow.
00:17:55
Speaker
But it is truly the Romans who both appreciated amber, but in their kind of entrepreneurial mindset that they always apply to commodities, decided to create real trade around it.
00:18:07
Speaker
So I think the Romans have to be credited for really invigorating the amber road back then.
00:18:14
Speaker
And there are a few quotes that are, you know, kind of politically incorrect to say the least, but one from Pliny the Elder, for instance, compares the value of a small statuette of ember worth as much as a healthy and vigorous slave.
00:18:31
Speaker
A little bit hard to know what that meant in terms of money back in the time, but you would assume that really shows how valuable it was.
00:18:39
Speaker
Wow.
00:18:39
Speaker
And why do you think it was so valuable?
00:18:41
Speaker
What did the Romans and others see in it?
00:18:45
Speaker
It's a variety of things.
00:18:46
Speaker
So definitely the mysteriousness around it played a big part.
00:18:51
Speaker
And the fact that in various cultures, it was associated with the sun, you know, which brings life and is in politics cultures, maybe the most important of all gods.
00:19:03
Speaker
And that was definitely part of it.
00:19:05
Speaker
It had all kinds of strange qualities.
00:19:10
Speaker
So ember,
00:19:11
Speaker
Floats most often.
00:19:12
Speaker
It smells if you burn it.
00:19:14
Speaker
It's often confused with Ambreglie, grey amber, which is a secretion from Wales, which is used in the perfume world.
00:19:21
Speaker
But Baltic amber and the resin also smell quite nice if you do burn it.
00:19:27
Speaker
And it has some electric properties.
00:19:29
Speaker
So if you rub one on a wool sweater, it will attract bits of paper or your hair or dust around it.
00:19:36
Speaker
So all of this, you know, deepened the mystery and therefore deepened the appeal.
00:19:42
Speaker
And then I don't know exactly when it started.
00:19:44
Speaker
It became a source of all kinds of curative properties.
Gallery's Thematic Exhibitions and Amber's Rarity
00:19:48
Speaker
So it could cure anything from physical ailment to melancholy.
00:19:53
Speaker
It could even be used, that's in the late or modern period, but as a love potion if you grinded it.
00:19:59
Speaker
So, you know, people ascribe a lot of those kind of fanciful effects to material that are deemed very rare and that in turn increases the value.
00:20:09
Speaker
So turning to the exhibition at Galerie Cougall, which is called Amber Treasures from the Baltic.
00:20:16
Speaker
How did this exhibition come to be and how does it fit into the context of Galerie Cougall's business?
00:20:23
Speaker
So there's two things about this.
00:20:25
Speaker
The first one is that for about two decades now, the gallery has become known for kind of an interesting exhibition program.
00:20:33
Speaker
We do them every two years.
00:20:36
Speaker
This time it's been five years because of the pandemic and other reasons.
00:20:39
Speaker
But historically, every two years, the gallery would open a show about not very well-known and maybe understudied topic.
00:20:48
Speaker
And they were always very, very diverse.
00:20:51
Speaker
So it can range from
00:20:53
Speaker
Renaissance scientific instruments, all the way to a tortoiseshell, all the way to silver guild.
00:21:00
Speaker
Always quite different and every time we try as hard as we can to be the first exhibition on this theme or one of and to write a book that can then become kind of like a monography on the workshop or the technique or something.
00:21:15
Speaker
So it's a long hard work.
00:21:18
Speaker
and our aim as a commercial enterprise of course is to create a market where there isn't so in the case of amber i don't know myself of any amber collectors today um i know that some museums in the baltic area are very keen on amber but there's not really a big art market associated with it so we hope
00:21:41
Speaker
in two months, there will be some great amber collectors and that some of our existing clients will discover how beautiful this material is and simply fall in love
Building the Gallery's Amber Collection
00:21:50
Speaker
with it.
00:21:50
Speaker
And this is to show, as I was telling you last week when we met, that I think it's really important to showcase to the larger audience that the world of old art, as we can call it among ourselves, is a dynamic one where you can make discoveries and where you can create value and
00:22:08
Speaker
Basically, maybe in contemporary sphere, you have emerging artists.
00:22:11
Speaker
Well, we have re-emerging artists, right?
00:22:13
Speaker
That have been forgotten sometimes for decades or centuries.
00:22:18
Speaker
So...
00:22:19
Speaker
That is one thing.
00:22:20
Speaker
The second thing about this show and the genesis of it is that my grandfather, who passed away in the 80s when my father and uncle were very young and had to take over the family gallery, had already in his collection a few masterpieces of amber, including the chess set, actually, which you may not know.
00:22:41
Speaker
So he had, I believe, four or five of the best objects of this exhibition.
00:22:46
Speaker
already acquired since the 60s or 70s and had always kept them aside because maybe he liked them particularly or found them really beautiful.
00:22:55
Speaker
But that gave the idea to my father and uncle to keep adding to that collection and that bulk.
00:23:02
Speaker
At first, not necessarily with the intention of creating an exhibition, but as soon as you have
00:23:07
Speaker
seven, eight, nine or ten beautiful pieces of the same material and time, you think, oh, this is a great ensemble.
00:23:14
Speaker
Maybe we should do a project out of this.
00:23:16
Speaker
And so we have been actively sourcing this material for now 20 to 25 years in order to create ourselves a typology and a diversity of objects representative of the incredible project.
00:23:33
Speaker
Prussia and of the Baltic region.
00:23:36
Speaker
And now it's the right time.
What are the historical uses of amber objects?
00:23:38
Speaker
We figured that we had kind of ticked all the boxes of what we wanted to show and we can finally present it to the public.
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:47
Speaker
So let's talk about these objects.
00:23:48
Speaker
As I mentioned, there are over 50 pieces in the exhibition and they represent really a wide variety of forms.
00:23:56
Speaker
Could you tell us what sorts of objects were made in amber in the Renaissance and early modern period?
00:24:02
Speaker
Yes.
00:24:02
Speaker
So in the early
00:24:05
Speaker
In the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, amber was primarily used for religious objects.
00:24:10
Speaker
So think of amber beads, you know, prayer beads, or maybe virgin and child and kind of religious statuary.
00:24:18
Speaker
It's really when the order of the Teutonic Knights, who controlled the Baltic region, when amber is sourced, transforms into the Duchy of Prussia in 1525, that the production of amber takes on a new path and that we see the emergence of a profane,
00:24:36
Speaker
You know, production, it's a very grandiose word, but that basically means anything that is not a religious object or intend for religious ceremony.
Centers of Amber Crafting: Danzig and Konigsberg
00:24:44
Speaker
So we start seeing game boards like the one we're going to discuss today, caskets, tankards, cups, things that are quite similar to some
00:24:54
Speaker
the silver of the period which you will be familiar with and sometimes different carvings, animals and of course you still have great altar pieces and crucifix but there was even a very small production of ember furniture of which very little has survived for rarity and obvious like fragility reasons.
00:25:14
Speaker
We have a huge
00:25:16
Speaker
table top still preserved that we are presenting in the show.
00:25:20
Speaker
And the most famous of all and mythical object made of amber is a
00:25:26
Speaker
It's called the Amber Room, which was basically created in the very early 18th century and a gift from the Prussians to the Tsar of
Amber Trade Routes and Noble Significance
00:25:34
Speaker
Russia.
00:25:34
Speaker
And it was famously and sadly lost during World War II.
00:25:40
Speaker
Every holiday shopper's got a list, but Ross shoppers, you've got a mission.
00:25:44
Speaker
Like a gift run that turns into a disco snow globe, throw pillows and PJs for the whole family.
00:25:48
Speaker
Dog included.
00:25:49
Speaker
At Ross, holiday magic isn't about spending more.
00:25:52
Speaker
It's about giving more for less.
00:25:54
Speaker
Ross, work your magic.
00:25:56
Speaker
So it's no accident that this game board comes from Danzig and you've mentioned Konigsberg as well.
00:26:03
Speaker
Why are these cities so important to the history of Amber?
00:26:07
Speaker
So I've now become sort of an expert on the Baltic region geography, kind of.
00:26:13
Speaker
So basically Danzig, present day Danzig and Konigsberg are two cities that are inland just about.
00:26:21
Speaker
But there is a stretch of about 200 kilometers of coastline between them.
00:26:26
Speaker
And that is exactly the coastline where amber washes up on the shores.
00:26:30
Speaker
So the way amber was collected, and one of the reasons why it took people so long to understand its true nature, is that after stormy night, you would find amber elements on the shoreline and on the beach.
00:26:45
Speaker
Another way to collect it at the time was to, again, after big storms, embark on little boats with huge poking divides and kind of, you know,
00:26:54
Speaker
rumble through the ocean floor in the hope of unlocking bits of ember that would have been caught between rocks or seaweed and so on.
00:27:02
Speaker
This is where ember is found.
00:27:03
Speaker
You can also extract it from the ground, which became the biggest way of finding it later on.
00:27:08
Speaker
And between those two cities, you have Konigsberg, which was the first place where ember really worked in the 16th and early 17th century.
00:27:17
Speaker
And later on, Benzig took over.
00:27:20
Speaker
a little bit like how Nuremberg was taken over by Augsburg in Germany at a similar time for silver objects.
00:27:28
Speaker
But there again, there's very little distance between the two cities and the production in terms of the typology of object is quite coherent.
Amber in European Cabinets of Curiosity
00:27:37
Speaker
It's mostly
00:27:38
Speaker
that you see Konigsberg as this beautiful place where works are created in 1650, let's say, and even before.
00:27:48
Speaker
And then it moves to Danzig.
00:27:50
Speaker
The difference between them is more in terms of...
00:27:53
Speaker
of art historical design and how it changes through time than truly in the quality of artists that you find in one place or another.
00:28:01
Speaker
They both had great craftsmen.
00:28:03
Speaker
They both had guilds of amber turners and carvers.
00:28:07
Speaker
And at some point, even later on, Berlin also becomes a center of production.
00:28:13
Speaker
And what can we learn from these amber objects about trade across Europe and around the world?
00:28:19
Speaker
So after the Teutonic order gets dismantled and the Duchy of Prussia is created, the first Duke of Prussia gives a monopoly on the commerce of ember to an art dealer, basically, a merchant from Densig.
00:28:38
Speaker
This man and his sons and his family subsequently clearly created a really sophisticated network whereby you then find amber traders who basically answer to them because they have the monopoly for the supply.
00:28:51
Speaker
You find them all the way
00:28:52
Speaker
to Venice and Genoa and Istanbul.
00:28:56
Speaker
So it really becomes a commodity traded at the highest level.
00:29:00
Speaker
And when I say amber trader, they were known as such.
00:29:03
Speaker
That is really their specialty.
00:29:04
Speaker
They're not like our dealers selling all kinds of bits and bobs.
00:29:08
Speaker
This is really what they do.
00:29:10
Speaker
After the Baltic region and the present day German region, the place in Europe with the most surviving amber is Italy.
00:29:20
Speaker
which is kind of interesting and which also attests to how many diplomatic presence in Ember were given by Prussia throughout the centuries.
00:29:30
Speaker
So great Italian families of collectors like the Corsini, the Medici, you know, the name that you will be familiar with.
00:29:38
Speaker
own a lot of amber in their collection.
00:29:39
Speaker
So if you visit the Pitti Palace in Florence, you will see in the Kunstkammer several works in amber, which can be considered surprising, but it was really sought after at the time where this idea of cabinets of curiosity and cabinets of wonder really takes on in all the princely courts of Europe.
00:29:59
Speaker
And amber was one of the obligatory object to own basically.
00:30:03
Speaker
And so the Medici's, their collection of amber all came from the Baltic region.
00:30:09
Speaker
It wasn't, you know, bits of amber found in Italy.
00:30:13
Speaker
This was amber that had been traded across the continent.
00:30:16
Speaker
Is that right?
00:30:17
Speaker
So yes, it's mostly Baltic amber.
00:30:20
Speaker
It's an interesting topic and one that we touch upon in our book and in our show, because there is a small, there is a small production of amber work in Italy and specifically in Sicily, where actually they had on the coast of Sicily, some, some amber elements and they also collected amber and
00:30:43
Speaker
Funnily enough, one of the most beautiful pieces, which is a relief kind of altarpiece in the Museum of Edinburgh, was tested recently.
00:30:52
Speaker
And even though it's worked in Italy, it tested as Baltic amber nonetheless.
00:30:57
Speaker
The reasons are foreign to me.
00:31:01
Speaker
One suggestion
00:31:05
Speaker
curators from the Museum of Gdansk, the Museum of Amber, was that a very dark shade of red amber that you find on all the kind of Italian amber almost could be the Sicilian amber and the more bright orange one would have been the Baltic one and they wanted to, you know, create an array of colors so they mixed both.
00:31:26
Speaker
Fascinating.
00:31:27
Speaker
So turning back to our game board, can you give me a sense of just how rare of an object this is?
00:31:36
Speaker
So as you know, the game of chess became extremely popular in the late Middle Age and early Renaissance period for European sovereigns.
00:31:45
Speaker
There is something about chess and the way the pawns are created with the king and queen surrounded with their jesters and their army men that almost replicate the natural order of the world as princes and sovereigns of Europe in that period would have seen it.
00:32:03
Speaker
And so it was really kind of the prerogative of very, very high-end aristocracy and princely courts to own a game board like this one.
00:32:11
Speaker
We know of kind of an interesting corpus of game boards made in embers, some early ones from Konigsberg.
00:32:18
Speaker
and some ones of the same period from dancing.
00:32:21
Speaker
But none of them can really be ascribed to a single artist.
00:32:27
Speaker
So we know that the best artist of dancing called Michael Redlin made a chessboard that was given as a diplomatic present.
00:32:34
Speaker
We know some original sketches, but the piece itself was lost.
00:32:39
Speaker
You know, sometimes you have some great archival sources, but the objects get destroyed or we lose the attribution.
00:32:47
Speaker
Because you find on the relief of the boat, as you mentioned, the crest of Danzig is the only one that can certainly ascribe to having been made in that city, even though stylistically several ones in museums around the world, you know, are attributed to Danzig workshops.
00:33:05
Speaker
This is the only one where we can be pretty much certain that that's where it was made.
00:33:11
Speaker
And unfortunately, we have lost the provenance of to whom it was originally made for.
00:33:18
Speaker
That would be, you know, an incredible treasure to find.
00:33:20
Speaker
Extremely rare.
00:33:22
Speaker
But certainly a prince of the area, or certainly someone for whom it was intended as a diplomatic presence, which is another option, and would also explain why you would find the Crest of Danzig.
00:33:36
Speaker
So can you give me a sense of just how rare of an object this game board is?
00:33:42
Speaker
In terms of current market value, an object like this is extremely rare for several reasons.
00:33:49
Speaker
This one is in exceptional condition.
00:33:51
Speaker
It had
00:33:52
Speaker
minor cleaning, you know, and minor restoration consistent with how old it is.
00:33:57
Speaker
But I find it truly moving.
00:34:00
Speaker
In fact, that it is complete with every single chess pawn and backgammon pawn and the pair of dice, which are the most exquisite part of it.
00:34:10
Speaker
And maybe some of your listeners will enjoy seeing an image of that later on.
00:34:15
Speaker
And a few chess boards have come up on the market over the past 30 years, but basically a handful.
00:34:22
Speaker
One was sold to one of the Amber Museums.
00:34:25
Speaker
I can't remember if it's the one in Gdansk or in Marburg.
00:34:29
Speaker
Recently, over the past two years by one of our colleagues who specializes on Kunstkammer objects and is also a great Amber Scholar.
00:34:37
Speaker
But otherwise, they barely come up and complete.
00:34:42
Speaker
They almost never come up.
00:34:44
Speaker
So here,
00:34:45
Speaker
you know, in terms of market value.
00:34:47
Speaker
We don't really publicize our prices, but throughout the exhibition, the prices go from, you know, about 10,000 euros to in excess of 1 million euros.
00:34:56
Speaker
And this board would definitely be on the higher end of that bracket.
00:35:01
Speaker
So when you're evaluating the relative quality and condition of these amber objects or this game board in particular, what are the elements that you're considering?
00:35:12
Speaker
We're considering quality, of course, of execution.
00:35:17
Speaker
We're considering the condition, which is the most important, almost, factor when we purchase objects.
00:35:24
Speaker
And we always try to focus on works that are already in utmost condition, especially when it comes to a material like amber, because it's very hard to repair.
00:35:35
Speaker
And basically, almost no one knows how to do it in the world because it's so rare.
00:35:40
Speaker
And then we have to inscribe it in the existing typology.
00:35:44
Speaker
And if you follow auction catalogs, maybe of the last 20 years,
00:35:49
Speaker
what you will find in terms of objects in Baltic Ember will be maybe little snuff boxes, maybe little carved figures, sometimes individual chess pieces, you know, sort of like a set of three random pawns that have survived together, but not with the rest and certainly not with the board.
00:36:08
Speaker
And the difficulty when we price an exhibition is that we have to wait until the last moment where all the works are included and installed to be able to accurately
00:36:19
Speaker
give them prices because they have to make sense between them, you know, from the most expensive to the least expensive, there has to be some kind of coherence.
00:36:28
Speaker
And then of course, if you have a great provenance or a great story attached to it, that will always be an added value.
00:36:34
Speaker
But the number one factor is the visual beauty and the rarity based on the typology of work that we know can be available.
00:36:44
Speaker
So when this game board was originally made, do you think it was envisioned as a practical game board for people to use to play games or did it have other purposes?
00:36:57
Speaker
I would assume the answer is no, again, because it has survived intact and because amber is such a rare material, much like game boards where ponds are made of ivory, you would assume they were not meant to be played with.
00:37:10
Speaker
However, we do know that the game of chess and learning the strategy that comes along with it was part of the upbringing and education of young princes around Europe.
00:37:23
Speaker
I think it was seen as also, you know, teaching you kind of like patience and reflection and military acumen and all those things.
00:37:30
Speaker
So definitely they knew how to play it.
00:37:33
Speaker
But having something like this was, you know, an object to be displayed in the cabinets in the precious Kunstkammer, both to showcase maybe their care for this clever game that was an intellectual pursuit.
00:37:48
Speaker
but also to display that work of ember, a very rare material.
00:37:52
Speaker
And if we do imagine that perhaps this game board ended up being commissioned for a sovereign, not from the immediate Prussian region, having something made of ember was even more important.
00:38:06
Speaker
There's a metaphor hiding here somewhere about a chessboard that's made to give off the impression of strategic thinking, but never intended to be used for it.
00:38:17
Speaker
Certainly.
00:38:19
Speaker
So you mentioned the notion that this might have been made for somebody outside of pressure, outside of that region.
00:38:28
Speaker
What can you tell me about who this piece might have originally been made for or what its symbolic significance might have been?
00:38:39
Speaker
Again, we do not know.
00:38:40
Speaker
Some archival sources mentioned that several game boards were made as diplomatic presence by the electors of
00:38:51
Speaker
of Prussia.
00:38:53
Speaker
The presence of the crest of Danzig could allude to it, you know, being reminiscent of the city where it was made.
00:39:00
Speaker
So maybe gives you a little clue that it would have been intended for a place further away, because why add it if it's for you?
00:39:09
Speaker
But then again, you could say, oh, perhaps it was made for someone important in Danzig who then wanted a reminder of their city.
00:39:15
Speaker
So we simply don't know.
00:39:17
Speaker
But definitely
00:39:19
Speaker
This would have been produced under the supervision, you know, of either the Yasky family, who are those dealers who had the monopoly and it lasted generations, or, you know, ministers of the elector himself to supervise where those diplomatic presence were going to end up.
00:39:37
Speaker
I wonder if I can ask you to speculate just a little more about the environment that it might originally have been placed in.
00:39:46
Speaker
As you say, we don't know specifically who its intended user or owner was, but what sort of person might it have been and how might they have displayed it and enjoyed it?
00:39:59
Speaker
So the history of Baltic ember in the 16th and 17th century is intrinsically linked to the history of the Wunderkammer when it comes to profane objects even more.
00:40:11
Speaker
And as I'm sure your listeners will be familiar with the term Kunstkammer or Wunderkammer, it's important to note that the whole intention behind those cabinets of precious objects was not solely to collect them and showcase them and enjoy them.
00:40:27
Speaker
It was really...
00:40:28
Speaker
showcasing your power to your guests, you know, or visitors, showcasing your knowledge.
00:40:34
Speaker
And basically, everything you owned and displayed was
00:40:39
Speaker
knowledge of the world that you held.
00:40:41
Speaker
So the more complete a Kunz camera and Wunderkammer, the more, you know, cultured and powerful the owner was.
00:40:50
Speaker
There was a whole kind of metaphysical element to that.
00:40:54
Speaker
So Ember, for instance, as part of those cabinets would have been collected in the
00:41:01
Speaker
this one, for sure.
00:41:04
Speaker
But also, that person could also have in a different room, a piece of raw amber, which was admired for completely different reasons, right?
00:41:13
Speaker
There was really something to say that people wanted to see carved amber and turned amber and how
00:41:22
Speaker
talented those workshops were at making the material shine and making it even more beautiful.
00:41:29
Speaker
But having a raw piece of amber kind of, you know, unpolished and like a big chunk that maybe would have a silver gilt then to be displayed on.
00:41:39
Speaker
That was seen as something completely different, you know, like owning the natural world and then the work piece and the game chess would be owning the human world.
00:41:49
Speaker
So where do you imagine this piece going next and what role could you see it filling in a collection, in a museum or in private hands?
00:42:00
Speaker
It's a very good question and we don't have any set idea on who the clients will be for this show that opens in just a few days when I speak to you.
00:42:09
Speaker
So I really do hope this one finds a new home soon.
00:42:13
Speaker
But basically these objects are great to me because they can be as much for private collectors as they can be for museums.
00:42:22
Speaker
Certainly in the United States, there's very few examples of them in public collections.
00:42:27
Speaker
They're a beautiful,
00:42:31
Speaker
set at the Boston MFA and very good examples at the Woodsboro Sothinian, a couple at the Met, a box in Detroit.
00:42:40
Speaker
And I might be forgetting one or two, but that's basically it.
00:42:45
Speaker
And I think for any anticopedic museum with a very good European art collection, this is definitely a gap to fill because the material has so much story to tell from how old it is to being the byproduct of, you know, drastic climate changes to how key it was as a...
00:43:09
Speaker
luxury products to the, you know, the setup of the early Prussian state.
00:43:15
Speaker
These are all very potent stories.
00:43:17
Speaker
And then it's beautiful.
00:43:19
Speaker
And that accounts for a lot.
00:43:21
Speaker
It's beautiful and rare.
00:43:22
Speaker
And I promise you, as soon as you display it with a good light, you are drawn to it because it irradiates color and very warm colors.
00:43:30
Speaker
So it's kind of magical.
00:43:33
Speaker
And I love decorative arts, as you know, and as you do.
00:43:36
Speaker
And I think that a game of
00:43:38
Speaker
chest is a perfect hook, let's say, for a museum collection to interest an audience and maybe a young audience because it's a fun, kind of whimsical, immediately recognizable object.
00:43:52
Speaker
But it could also end up in a private collection.
00:43:55
Speaker
This one
00:43:56
Speaker
thankfully or not thankfully, but has no ivory, which was often added to amber objects.
00:44:04
Speaker
And we speculate that artists who turned ivory were also amber turners.
00:44:09
Speaker
And there's a big crossover in how the material works when you work it, sorry, how it is, even though it's very different.
00:44:17
Speaker
So amber is soft like ivory and kind of easy to carve, but it's much more fragile and can shatter like glass.
00:44:25
Speaker
So it's kind of odd.
00:44:27
Speaker
But some of the most beautiful works in this exhibition have, you know, little ivory scrolls and reliefs and decorations.
00:44:33
Speaker
This one doesn't, which obviously, on a market perspective, makes it much easier to sell, basically, because it's a material that isn't legally traded in all countries of the world.
00:44:46
Speaker
Do you play chess yourself?
00:44:49
Speaker
My parents signed me up for chess club when I was little and I enjoyed learning it, but I think I was slightly traumatized about being stuck there.
00:44:58
Speaker
So I take it you haven't played chess on this particular board?
00:45:02
Speaker
I wouldn't dare, but maybe the next owner will and it will be up to him or her.
00:45:09
Speaker
Is there a key central message that you'd like for the community to take away from this exhibition?
00:45:16
Speaker
Well, definitely, if any of your listeners end up being in Paris over the next two months, I would love for them to come view the show or if they want to introduce themselves and, you know, comment that they learn from it from the podcast, that would be tremendous and a lot of fun.
00:45:32
Speaker
But I basically hope for a lot of visitors.
00:45:36
Speaker
Again, we are a commercial gallery.
00:45:39
Speaker
But we really want to share this project with the public and have as many, you know, art lovers, students, curators, researchers or just anyone as many people come visit it because I think it will be a discovery for most people.
00:45:55
Speaker
It certainly has been a discovery for myself, a material that I thought I knew quite well.
00:46:02
Speaker
came to light, you know, in front of my eyes.
00:46:05
Speaker
And I find that really nice when you can enter an exhibition, whether it's for like 15 minutes or, you know, two hours and you leave and you have the sensation that you have learned some microscopic thing about a very niche theme, you know,
00:46:22
Speaker
It's a beautiful tool to get people interested in art.
00:46:26
Speaker
So this is kind of my takeaway.
00:46:28
Speaker
I love the story of Amber.
00:46:30
Speaker
I love the story of modern age Europe, but mostly I love those objects because they are simply so beautiful.
00:46:39
Speaker
Well, Laura Cugel, thanks so much for sharing this experience with us and telling us about this wonderful exhibition, which again is open as of the publication of this episode until December 16th at Gallery Cugel in Paris.
00:46:54
Speaker
I do hope that listeners will take a look.
00:46:57
Speaker
It's a very unusual and special experience to be able to have.
00:47:02
Speaker
And again, I appreciate you bringing it to our attention, Laura, and for sharing your insights and telling us about this fantastic chessboard, which is just one of the many captivating objects that people will be able to see in the show and in the accompanying book.
00:47:21
Speaker
Well, thank you for your time.
00:47:22
Speaker
I'm a big fan of the podcast, so I'm absolutely thrilled that I was able to be here and I look forward to your next episode.
00:47:29
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support from Sarah Bellotta.
00:47:35
Speaker
Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
00:47:39
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
00:47:41
Speaker
And I'm Ben Miller.
00:48:02
Speaker
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Speaker
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