Transcript
Speaker: Hello, Curious Objects listeners.
Speaker: I'm Sammy Dilotti, Senior Editor at the Magazine Antiques and producer of this podcast.
Speaker: Host Ben Miller is off this week, and so we're taking a trip into the vault.
Speaker: The Green Vault, that is, in Dresden.
Speaker: Recognized as the oldest museum in the world, it's the repository for many fine and unusual things, including a very special collection of suits of armor from the 16th century.
Speaker: Ben, along with Michael Diaz Griffith, spoke with Chaska Kirchhoff of the Detroit Institute of Arts on the subject of those suits a few years ago, and we revisit their conversation in this episode.
Speaker: Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: And I'm Michael Diaz-Griffith.
Speaker: And Michael, this is a bittersweet moment for me, because although I certainly hope to have you back on Curious Objects in the future, this is your last episode with me formally as co-host.
Speaker: It is, and it is bittersweet.
Speaker: Bitter because I've enjoyed being co-host so much and learning with you and with our audience, but sweet because I'm moving on to a full-time role with Sir John Soane's Museum Foundation, a really fabulous organization based surprisingly in New York.
Speaker: And while I'll still be able to do podcasts and hang out with you in the context of the New Antiquarians, Ben, I've got a really big job to do.
Speaker: So I'm trying to arrange my schedule so that I can...
Speaker: get it all done.
Speaker: And unfortunately, this is one area where, from my perspective, I know I'm not as needed as in other areas because you've got such a fantastic handle on this podcast that you created.
Speaker: Well, that's very kind, but it really, you've brought a fantastic energy to Curious Objects that I've been very grateful for.
Speaker: And it's been a lot of fun working with you.
Speaker: Although I have to say, as you mentioned, you and I are going to have plenty of opportunities to work together on Curious Objects again, I hope, but certainly with the new Antiquarians, which for listeners who aren't aware, this is an organization we started to try and
Speaker: expand the tent of people, particularly young people interested in art and decorative art.
Speaker: So we're doing plenty of events with the New Antiquarians, including one next week with Christie's.
Speaker: And we'll be very active.
Speaker: Yeah, very active in that fold.
Speaker: And I hope to return to the podcast to spread the word about the Seau Museum in America.
Speaker: Can you tell us just a little bit about the Sewn Museum and the foundation and the work that you guys are doing?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Well, John Sewn was an architect who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Speaker: And
Speaker: He was a neoclassicist, but a very inventive one known for his particularly attenuated light and creative manner of designing both residential spaces, but more importantly, great public spaces, including the Bank of England, which was sadly demolished.
Speaker: But he did something that really extended his legacy beyond all of those buildings.
Speaker: He constructed a museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields in Hoban in London.
Speaker: And I'm sure some of our listeners have been there.
Speaker: I certainly spent a great deal of time there as a grad student in London.
Speaker: And he negotiated through a private act of parliament that this building, which was
Speaker: contained his private apartments where he lived with his wife, but also a museum that he built during his lifetime and outfitted with his collections.
Speaker: They were left to the nation in perpetuity.
Speaker: And the act stipulated that the collections would be passed on to board of trustees acting on behalf of the nation.
Speaker: and that all would be preserved as nearly as possible in the state they were at during Soane's lifetime.
Speaker: So the museum is a fascinating sort of time capsule, but it's also, you know, a very creative institution that works hard to interpret the material in the building, as well as exhibitions that come to the building in a very...
Speaker: forward-looking way.
Speaker: So I love what they do.
Speaker: And the foundation in America, we support the museum and interact with them through fundraising and all sorts of interesting initiatives.
Speaker: But we also mount our own programming in New York and hopefully soon regionally from a kind of Sonian perspective.
Speaker: So you'll hear much more about this.
Speaker: Yeah, well, I can't wait to see what you do with the organization.
Speaker: It's super exciting to see you doing this.
Speaker: It's an incredible position for you to be taking and huge congratulations to you on that, even if it means we're losing you on Curious Objects.
Speaker: Speaking of which, let's get to chatting a little about today's Curious Object.
Speaker: I love this interview, Ben.
Speaker: It's so good.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Speaker: So I talked, this was actually before the shutdown.
Speaker: I had a conversation with Chaska Kirchhoff, who is a specialist in arms and armor, which is a subject that gets my inner high schooler very excited.
Speaker: But when we talked, she was actually at the Metropolitan Museum, but she's since moved to the Detroit Institute of Art, a sad loss for the city of New York.
Speaker: But we had the chance to talk about this group of suits of armor that really opened up for me a new way of thinking about objects and the way that they move through history.
Speaker: Yeah, this sort of perspective on, quote, longitudinal history is fascinating to me.
Speaker: And, you know, while I do think, even on some of our episodes, we've thought about the journeys that objects take through time, you know, colonial Williamsburg, we often think about in the context of the 18th century, the 1930s, and today, for example.
Speaker: But we don't always do that.
Speaker: And I think we spend a lot of time
Speaker: thinking very carefully and closely about how to interpret objects in the present so that their relevance is evident to newer audiences.
Speaker: At least that's been a focus for you and me, right, Ben?
Speaker: But it's important to think about the journeys that objects take and all of the different ways they've been interpreted and received through time.
Speaker: And this interview does a really good job of highlighting that.
Speaker: Yeah, it can really help bring objects to life when you think about them existing, not just at the moment that they were made and today, but at all the moments in between.
Speaker: And that can also be a little overwhelming.
Speaker: But in the case of these suits of armor, they play so many different symbolic roles through the generations.
Speaker: And it was really fascinating for me to dive into that with Jessica.
Speaker: So let's, without further ado, let's dive into that interview.
Speaker: But thank you so much, Michael.
Speaker: Again, it's been a huge pleasure having you on Curious Objects.
Speaker: And I hope we'll have you back on in the not too distant future.
Speaker: Thank you, Ben.
Speaker: It's been a pleasure and an honor.
Speaker: And to all of our listeners, thank you for letting me go on this podcast journey with you.
Speaker: I'll see you soon.
Speaker: Since 1805, Freeman's has been part of the fabric of Philadelphia, helping generations of clients in the buying and selling of fine and decorative arts, jewelry, design, and more.
Speaker: Freeman's celebrates Pennsylvania's longstanding legacy as a major and influential artistic region, and is committed to the craftsmanship and artistry of the Commonwealth.
Speaker: Whether it is a conoid bench by George Nagashima, a Chippendale carved side chair by Thomas Affleck, or a painting by Fern Coppedge, Freeman's is renowned for selling works by important artists and designers from the Quaker state.
Speaker: Freeman's is always looking for and able to evaluate fine art furniture and decorative arts made and used in Pennsylvania from the earliest colonial period through the 20th century.
Speaker: Visit freemansauction.com to request a complimentary auction estimate or to speak with one of their specialists.
Speaker: Freeman's, Philadelphia's auction house, sharing the world of art, design, and jewelry with you wherever you are.
Speaker: Jessica Kirchhoff, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker: You're welcome.
Speaker: I'm glad to be here.
Speaker: And we're going to talk today about a group of works of armor.
Speaker: which is something we've never talked about on this podcast before, and I'm really excited to dive into it, especially because there's an unusually interesting history behind this set.
Speaker: But before we get into that, I want to hear a little bit about your story and how you got to where you are.
Speaker: You're starting right now a job at the Detroit Institute of Art.
Speaker: which is very exciting.
Speaker: But the path you took to get there is totally fascinating.
Speaker: And I think listeners would be interested to know how you developed your interest in arms and armor.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: It's a nonlinear pathway.
Speaker: So as we've mentioned in conversation, I was born in the Missouri Ozarks, which is not a place that most people associate with high culture or particularly with Central European arms and armor.
Speaker: You can say that.
Speaker: But my background was really as a maker.
Speaker: So from a very young age, I was an artist.
Speaker: I was interested in jewelry making and metal work.
Speaker: I attended the Missouri Fine Arts Academy in the last year of high school.
Speaker: I worked in non-ferrous metal, so in silver, gold, copper, as well as in ferrous metals.
Speaker: I was trained as a welder.
Speaker: Ferrous metals being iron.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So iron, steel.
Speaker: I was actually trained as a welder.
Speaker: I still, I think, have an OSHA certification in welding and also as a glass blower.
Speaker: So I had this...
Speaker: this hand in sort of the flammable aspects of art making for a long time.
Speaker: And as I considered my future and considered applying to MFA programs and sculpture or glass or metal, it became evident to me that
Speaker: all of my artwork was essentially about art history, which had been my second major throughout my collegiate experience and really the source of inspiration for most of the objects that I made.
Speaker: And so I realized that art history was my true path.
Speaker: And the first time I was able to touch and handle an object of armor, a martial object, I really was...
Speaker: immediately enchanted.
Speaker: What was it?
Speaker: It was a breastplate and it was actually a revivalist breastplate.
Speaker: So it was a breastplate that was made probably in the mid 19th century by a guy named Aaron Schmidt in Munich.
Speaker: And he was a dealer and maker of historicizing armors.
Speaker: He actually had access to many of the works in the Kunsthistorisch Museum.
Speaker: So he made these amazing replicas of really some of the greatest works of the armorers art ever produced at the end of the 15th century.
Speaker: One of these somehow made it to Kansas.
Speaker: And so as a young graduate student, I was able to handle and examine this object, which led me down a trail to Vienna, to the Kunsthistorisch Museum, to the source material.
Speaker: And, you know, I never looked back.
Speaker: It was love at first sight with arms and armor.
Speaker: You know, it's kinetic sculpture, it's haute couture, it's all of these things sort of rolled into this amazing, innovative, metallic surface.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right, so you've now become a scholar of Arms in Armor specifically, and what we're talking about today is this incredible group that you've been working with and studying at the Metropolitan Museum, and there's an example from this collection at Detroit as well.
Speaker: And what interested me about this group when you started to tell me about them is that they have this
Speaker: life that is not, you know, we were just talking before we started here about how objects are sometimes treated as having been made at one point in time and then being experienced at another point in time today and having very little life in between then and now.
Speaker: But with this particular group of armor, we actually know a fair bit about what's happened between the day they were made and today.
Speaker: that course of events actually sheds light on a lot of interesting facets of history.
Speaker: So I'm excited to dive in.
Speaker: So tell us just for starters, what are these objects and when were they made?
Speaker: Yeah, so the objects that I've been working on recently really as part of my mandate at the Metropolitan Museum to flesh out some of the provenance histories of the objects in the collections of arms and armor, about 14,000 objects.
Speaker: But within that body of work, these armors really stood out to me because they have such a well-documented past.
Speaker: And there are so many named individuals, so many personae,
Speaker: with which we can associate those armors.
Speaker: And these are armors that were made for a form of knightly sport, a form of tournament called the Balianrennen,
Speaker: which is a form of renin.
Speaker: The renin is essentially the joust of war.
Speaker: So it's a joust between two combatants fought across a tilt barrier, a wall, using sharpened lances.
Speaker: The joust of war always uses sharpened lances.
Speaker: So it's really, it's a kind of sport.
Speaker: It's not combat in earnest, but it is very dangerous.
Speaker: And that name, joust of war, acknowledges the danger of jousting with sharp lances.
Speaker: So give me a little more context here.
Speaker: The joust is distinct from combat, as you say, it's an athletic event and a performative event.
Speaker: But there were real stakes.
Speaker: I mean, people were injured and killed.
Speaker: These armors were specialized for this sport.
Speaker: They weren't meant to be used in real battle, is that right?
Speaker: That's absolutely correct.
Speaker: And it's interesting because you bring up the sort of the physical stakes of knightly sports such as the joust.
Speaker: And these armors that we're talking about were actually made during the 1580s.
Speaker: So they're very late in the lifetime of what we consider the tournament, the popularity of the tournament at the European court.
Speaker: And when we think about the rise and fall, if you will, of jousting as a preferred sport for the aristocracy, for the princely classes,
Speaker: It's something that really started to die out by the end of the 16th century when these armors were made because of safety concerns.
Speaker: So we have in the third quarter of the 16th century, the death of King Henry II of France as a direct result of a jousting incident.
Speaker: A splinter from a shattered lance actually made its way
Speaker: through his visor and into his eye.
Speaker: And yeah, it was a bad way to go.
Speaker: And so as you can imagine, the elites of Europe during the period realized that, you know, to a certain extent, jeopardizing the life of the king in the name of sport was not necessarily the best form of statecraft.
Speaker: Yeah, it seems a little extreme.
Speaker: president playing quarterback for the Detroit Lions.
Speaker: Exactly, exactly.
Speaker: And so by the 1580s, when this group of armors were produced, the joust had really fallen out of favor in many parts of Europe, but it survived in Saxony because of the way that it could telegraph bravery, the way that it could telegraph martial prowess.
Speaker: It allowed princes to perform their martial skills and
Speaker: off of the battlefield for an audience that was far broader than soldiers or other commanders.
Speaker: It included ladies, it included members of the clergy, it included the patricians of the towns that they ruled.
Speaker: So it was a really effective way of telegraphing and performing power.
Speaker: What was different about Saxony?
Speaker: Saxony was interesting because it was, I think, very important for the electors and later the kings from the 19th century onward of Saxony to establish themselves as powerful because they really had existed for a very long time in tension with the Holy Roman Empire, particularly from the genesis of the Reformation in 1517.
Speaker: We know that the Dukes of Saxony were early adopters of Reformation thought, were supporters and protectors of Martin Luther.
Speaker: And so in that way, they really did set themselves up as sort of counterpoints to the Catholic Holy Roman emperors who were the premier court of the time.
Speaker: And so Saxony in many ways sort of developed in parallel to the courts of more well-known rulers like Maximilian I and Charles V, Ferdinand I down in Austria.
Speaker: So you get the sort of northeastern German counterpart in Saxony.
Speaker: So they had a particular interest in maintaining this aura of chivalry, of martial prowess, and the Joust was a pretty good way of doing that.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And I would argue that it also has to do with the materiality of the armor itself, the sort of materiality of martial technology, because Saxony is a center of mining and smelting.
Speaker: And at this time in the early modern period, it's one of the sort of main industries for which they're known and also innovation in the metal arts.
Speaker: So, for instance, you know, the Dukes of Saxony, people like Augustus I, who actually
Speaker: also commissioned amazing tools.
Speaker: So his wire drawing table is currently on view at the Met in making marbles.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he would performatively enact these aspects of metal craft for his court.
Speaker: And that wire drawing table, which is about
Speaker: eight feet long, it's an enormous object, is decorated with all of this beautiful engraving and the steel parts of the tool, essentially, which were etched by the same makers who made the weapons for the court.
Speaker: And the sides of the table are decorated with marquetry that represents tournaments at the Saxon court.
Speaker: So there's this sort of coexistence, this
Speaker: almost complementary relationship between the metal arts, the performance of the metal arts, even by the prints, and martial prowess, martial skill, and the sorts of constructions of the martial body encased in steel that we see in the armors.
Speaker: Okay, so take us back to the armors for a second then.
Speaker: So these were made in, you say, in the 1580s, and what quantity of material are we talking about?
Speaker: In terms of quantity, do you mean weight or?
Speaker: Well, yes, I am interested in just how large and thick and heavy they were, but also how many individual pieces.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So we know of at least 35 of these armors existing from the period.
Speaker: of those 29 remained in the Saxon collections up until the modern era, essentially up until the 19th century, which is, I think, really spectacular to think about this group of objects.
Speaker: And also when we think about armors, you know, we as specialists in arms and armor really think about armors as individual works.
Speaker: We think of them
Speaker: as objects that were made on a bespoke basis in most cases.
Speaker: Luxury armors were made to measure for the princes who wore them in the moment they wore them, so they really do become sort of an index of a body in that particular time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You gain weight in middle age and you need a new set of armor.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Or you need to add a little bit of steel along the side of your breastplate, which we have examples of.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But in this case, it was a group of armors that were made for the courtiers of the Saxon court.
Speaker: So these are not the jousting armors that were worn by the electors of Saxony.
Speaker: They were armors that were worn by members of the court for various contests.
Speaker: And therefore, instead of being like a bespoke suit that you would order maybe from Brooks Brothers,
Speaker: It's more like a really well-made set of football pads.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I like that analogy.
Speaker: I mean, it's interesting.
Speaker: I was a band kid when I was younger, and I always think of them as being sort of like band uniforms because it's an object that, you know, you select the one that fits you and you wear it for the duration of the time that it's needed and then you give it back.
Speaker: And so this idea of the uniform or the sports equipment.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So they're really sort of unusual in that sense.
Speaker: They exist in this gray area between princely luxury armors for the tournament and what we call munitions armors, the kinds of armors that would have been made for the infantry or for the regular fighting men of the period.
Speaker: So they're really special in that sense.
Speaker: And this is interesting, is that, you know, armor was an expensive investment.
Speaker: And
Speaker: So these pieces, were they paid for by the electors and then lent to the courtiers who would have worn them?
Speaker: And is that how infantry armor would have worked as well in the period?
Speaker: Or would the infantry have been required to purchase their own armor?
Speaker: It depended on what part of the infantry you were in and what various principality or prince bishopric.
Speaker: We have to remember that Central Europe and the Holy Roman Empire at this time is sort of this complex patchwork of political entities alongside, you know, mercenary companies like the Landsknecht forces for whom armor was frequently a part of the loot that was captured on the battlefield.
Speaker: So you would see people from all
Speaker: socioeconomic statuses actually wearing luxury armors that had been captured.
Speaker: In the case of civic militias, people who were defending the towns in which they lived, they were required to provide their own armors.
Speaker: So in many cases, people would be wearing armors that were one, two, three generations old.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Because it was a very expensive proposition to get a set of armor, what we call a garniture.
Speaker: So a set of interchangeable pieces of armor.
Speaker: Or even a breastplate and a helmet for a patrician who's required to have these objects.
Speaker: So they would be passed down.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: In some cases, infantry would be provided with armor.
Speaker: That's the case for the infantry who fought for Maximilian during the North Italian Wars in the early part of the 16th century.
Speaker: So it runs the gamut.
Speaker: In the case of the jousting armors that we're talking about, again, not for battle, a different type of object, less bellicose, but still imposing.
Speaker: These would have been kept in the Saxon arsenal and lent out to the courtiers.
Speaker: So if you were invited to participate in a joust at the court of Christian I, who was likely the elector under whom these armors were ordered, or any of his successors,
Speaker: then you would come and be fitted for the one that fit you the best, and then you would wear it in tournaments, perhaps over the course of years, and then give it back to the arsenal.
Speaker: And the arsenal was also the display space for these objects, because we do have documentations for their display alongside the armors of the princes.
Speaker: So they become sort of a ghostly court in that way.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, so how much money are we talking about?
Speaker: What would it have cost to commission the production of 35?
Speaker: sets of jousting armor?
Speaker: That's a pretty difficult question and I hope to undertake some research in the months and years ahead to uncover more of those primary sources.
Speaker: There's quite a bit less research on the armors produced in northern Germany compared to
Speaker: So when we think about receipts, which are really a goldmine for those of us working really on any form of artwork, but armors in particular, because we're always trying to make a case for the value of these objects during the period, that armors were valued artworks.
Speaker: However, many of the primary sources that we have, which have been discovered by people like Alexander von Eizenstein in the middle of the 20th century by Mike,
Speaker: Pierre Terjanian, who just undertook the Last Night exhibition more recently.
Speaker: Most of that documentation relates to the southern German Habsburg courts.
Speaker: There's a lot of documentation for armors coming out of southern Germany, Augsburg, Nuremberg,
Speaker: Austria, specifically Innsbruck, as well as the Netherlands.
Speaker: But the Saxon court is far less well documented.
Speaker: Yeah, and I would love to be able to sort of reconstruct the lives and the checkbooks of those armorers someday.
Speaker: Okay, well, we'll leave that for the next time then.
Speaker: We'll be back in just a moment with Jessica Kirchhoff, but first I want to say thank you, as always, for listening.
Speaker: If you'd like to get in touch, you can email me at curiousobjectspodcast at gmail.com or find me on Instagram at Objective Interest.
Speaker: I love hearing your comments and ideas.
Speaker: You can see images of the suits of armor at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
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Speaker: So now let's take these forward through history because you said earlier that when these armors were made, we were already at the tail end of the period during which that kind of pageantry was still in vogue.
Speaker: And so how long do you think these armors would have been used for that original purpose?
Speaker: These are interesting because they include
Speaker: design aspects that actually allowed them to be used quote unquote more comfortably they're not they're not comfortable in the way that we would imagine them to be um but but help to increase the safety of these objects so that they could be used um
Speaker: really much longer than we would anticipate.
Speaker: And that's one of the things that I think is so spectacular about them is that these are objects that had working lives that extended over not decades, but centuries.
Speaker: And we have documentation of their consistent use.
Speaker: from the end of the 16th century through the beginning of the 18th century, which is just really incredible.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: And it's something that we don't have for really any other armor produced during the period.
Speaker: We know that many objects had complex afterlives, mostly as objects of display.
Speaker: So, for instance, the Heroes Armory at Schloss Ambrass in Innsbruck was
Speaker: gallery of armors that were presented essentially as heroic predecessors to Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol.
Speaker: But most armors that survived did survive as objects of display or they survived in sort of different socioeconomic contexts, as I mentioned, as objects that had very long working lives because of
Speaker: of economic need.
Speaker: But these objects, these jousting armors from the court of Saxony survived as both objects of display and participants in really a working tournament tradition, a living tournament tradition that would bring them out and sort of animate them periodically throughout 200 years.
Speaker: So by the end of this, in the 18th century, we're talking about a very anachronistic
Speaker: of undertaking, right?
Speaker: I mean, this is, you know, not too long before a period of military history that we all have, you know, a very strong set of mental imagery around, which is the American Revolution, right?
Speaker: And it's not exactly a time of charging, you know, knights on horses with lances, right?
Speaker: I mean, gunpowder was far and away the dominant military technology.
Speaker: what would it have meant for someone to participate in a joust in the early 18th century?
Speaker: What was the significance of that?
Speaker: I think it continued to be a declaration of bravery, of martial prowess.
Speaker: It also had to do with lineage because as you mentioned, it was extremely anachronistic.
Speaker: It was very much about the history of the electors and at that point, kings of Saxony because this is in the court of August II, the Strong, who is both elector and Duke of Saxony, but also King of Poland.
Speaker: So he's establishing a broader royal lineage for his family and essentially telegraphing this
Speaker: this long and illustrious past, the chivalric identity that he's inherited.
Speaker: So it's nostalgia.
Speaker: Exactly, exactly.
Speaker: And, you know, that's something when I write about these objects, I think by the 18th century we can safely use the term nostalgia, but it's so difficult because it happens even by the end of the 16th century when these objects are made.
Speaker: You know, the tournament, as we mentioned, is waning.
Speaker: So there's a kind of what we would call nostalgia.
Speaker: Nostalgia wasn't invented as a word at that time.
Speaker: So what do we call it?
Speaker: I frequently use the term culture of remembrance or Erinnerungskultur auf Deutsch.
Speaker: So it's this way of conceptualizing this sort of backward-looking interest in chivalric lineages that we see really consistently throughout the early modern era, especially in Central and Northern Europe.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, but then at a certain point, even those cultures of remembrance had to give way to the modern age, and the role of these armors changed once again.
Speaker: So tell me about what was the next stage in their life after these tournaments had finally ended?
Speaker: Yeah, so I think before we jump off to that sort of culmination of the lifetimes of the objects, I think it's important to acknowledge the very last tournament because it really was a turning point.
Speaker: So again, we're in the reign of August the 2nd of Saxony, also King of Poland.
Speaker: He performed feats of strength for his court.
Speaker: And he also, like his predecessors, supported the metallic arts.
Speaker: He was very interested in innovation related to mining and smelting.
Speaker: The tournaments in which these objects participated were actually called the Tournaments of the Four Elements.
Speaker: And so they were essentially theatrical performances.
Speaker: The Four Elements being earth, fire, wind, and water?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Aristotelian style.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And this is within sort of a realm of thought that connects really closely to...
Speaker: sort of ongoing scholarship like the Making a Knowing Project, this idea of the interest in science and the way that the arts and sciences sort of all come together culturally at this time in what we would consider the early Enlightenment era.
Speaker: And so these armors that had come from the late 16th century tournament tradition
Speaker: then get sort of reappropriated as representations of the prowess of the Saxon sort of knowledge of fire, the knowledge of the elements, the ability to manipulate natural resources in sort of service of the dukes and later kings.
Speaker: So a sort of celebration of technological achievement or alchemical knowledge or...
Speaker: Also alchemy.
Speaker: It's interesting because the same Dukes of Saxony who have these wire drawing benches and other sorts of objects like this, they also have alchemical stoves that recent research has shown were actually used.
Speaker: So there's a lot of tinkering happening at this court.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is so interesting because you think about this idea of science as sort of a genteel, non-bellicose practice, but then you think about it as it's embodied in the achievements of smiths, like the armorers who made the Saxon works, whose names we know.
Speaker: It's like the von Speyer workshop, Wolf and Peta.
Speaker: They were the Lockheids and Raytheons of their day.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And also the Maseratis, because they're objects of desire, they're objects of wealth, of power.
Speaker: So it's really interesting to think about this last hurrah of the armors in a certain way to be still closely connected to this idea of innovation, of hope for the future.
Speaker: um so they really become sort of fulcra between an early modern past and what for august the second in his court was sort of an enlightenment present so within four years of that tournament of the tournament of the four elements um
Speaker: August talks with his advisors and essentially establishes what is one of the first predecessors of the modern museum.
Speaker: So he seeks to consolidate the collections of the Duchy of Saxony into what would become the Historicus Museum in Dresden, the Grünes Gewalbe, the Green Vaults, which we all know very well because of recent events and also from the Making Marvels exhibition at the Met.
Speaker: And it's interesting because these armors and most of the princely arsenal of Saxony immediately get rolled in by 1723 into this larger sort of modernizing what we would consider almost a museum mission.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: So, I mean, really within just a few years after they were still commissioned and in use, they're treated as collectibles or museum items, maybe not in the same sense that we have of a museum item, but something akin to that.
Speaker: Exactly, and the room that they had inhabited really since their creation, what's called the Balian Kammer in the Saxon Arsenal, sadly that building has since been destroyed mostly.
Speaker: But this is a space that was intended for the arming of knights for the tournament.
Speaker: It existed adjacent to the tournament grounds, so knights could ride directly out into the lists from the arsenal itself.
Speaker: But that was a space that really was a display space for its entire life.
Speaker: So when the armors weren't in use, they were hung on the walls.
Speaker: As I mentioned, the mounted armors of the Dukes of Saxony were flanked by these ranks of tournament armors that would have been worn by their courtiers.
Speaker: And that space was essentially immediately translated into a display space.
Speaker: in the early 18th century where the armors of the Dukes of Saxony could form, as we mentioned at other courts, sort of an armory of heroes.
Speaker: It's a ghostly lineage, a standing evocation that evokes the physicality of the predecessors of the ruling family.
Speaker: Who was walking into these spaces to look at these ghostly armors?
Speaker: Many people.
Speaker: So during the 18th century and really even by the 17th century, you could come on the invitation of the Duke.
Speaker: So we have these great travelers accounts.
Speaker: There's one that is really one of my favorites.
Speaker: It's by Tobias Boynton from 1674.
Speaker: And he describes walking into this arsenal space and he literally gives us the play by play of what you would encounter as you're walking through the space.
Speaker: So he says, you know,
Speaker: There's one white armor, which is the steel, the brightened steel polished armor that we imagine.
Speaker: And then next to that is a black armor, an armor painted with black paint to darken it.
Speaker: So there's this sort of rhythmic display of jousting armors in black and white that marches through the space.
Speaker: And those are mounted on the wall behind the mounted figures, which literally are on mannequins and in many cases also with horse mannequins.
Speaker: of the armors for man and horse of the Dukes of Saxony.
Speaker: So it's a space that really, I think, for people who have been to great collections of arms and armor, maybe in Vienna or Madrid or Innsbruck, it's a space that seems very familiar to us.
Speaker: And even if you imagine walking into the galleries at the Metropolitan Museum and you're met with
Speaker: you know, some of the great armors in particular, there's a 16th century Saxon armor at the head of our equestrian group.
Speaker: You can start to sort of conceptualize what the space would have been like.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the impression that these armors were supposed to make was supposed to be received by perhaps, you know, members of the broader public.
Speaker: Not just, this wasn't just courtiers walking around and telling stories about
Speaker: the days of yore.
Speaker: This was also sort of a public display of the strength of the
Speaker: It was, and from 1832 onwards.
Speaker: So it exists for, as we mentioned, from 1723 to 1832, essentially as a princely Kunstkammer, or art collection.
Speaker: So we're thinking about it as still very much a note of the court, but a note of the court to which people can be invited to reiterate this powerful lineage that the dukes and later kings are
Speaker: are claiming.
Speaker: But from 1832, the museum is founded as a modern museum.
Speaker: So you get the foundation of the Johann Neum, the historicist museum in Dresden.
Speaker: And that really inaugurates a new conceptualization of those objects because, you know, their lives as tournament objects are really long over at that point.
Speaker: And also to a certain extent, it positions them as an inheritance of the state, the newly sort of nascent state of Saxony, the idea of maybe a regional identity in addition to a courtly identity.
Speaker: But really from that point until...
Speaker: the end of the First World War, they continue to inhabit the space that they had lived in from 1580 onward.
Speaker: So it's really interesting to think about all of these iterations that change conceptually the way that the armors are presented and displayed, but really that remain the same.
Speaker: Right, it's really the context changing around them.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: The reception is changing, but there's an immense continuity in terms of the space.
Speaker: And yeah, I think that's so unusual and sort of poetic.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: I mean, it emphasizes what's so interesting to me about so many old objects, which is this sense of a continuum between the past and the present.
Speaker: And it's remarkable when an object has stayed in the same place physically, because emotionally, at least for me, that really drives home the point that that object really has been there the whole time.
Speaker: On a recent episode, I spoke with a furniture dealer, Frank Levy, who had purchased a set of 16 chairs and two sofas that were made in New York in the early 19th century.
Speaker: and he bought them out of the family.
Speaker: And a couple of the chairs needed a little bit of restoration.
Speaker: So he drove them over the Queensborough Bridge to his restorer.
Speaker: And at some point while he was on the Queensborough Bridge, the thought occurred to him that this was perhaps the first time that these chairs had ever left the island of Manhattan.
Speaker: And that's sort of a remarkable story
Speaker: I mean, on the one hand, it's very unremarkable.
Speaker: Of course, you know, it's no big deal.
Speaker: You're moving these chairs a couple of miles.
Speaker: On the other hand, you know, just to realize that for hundreds of years, this object has been situated in this particular place as people have lived and died and been born around it.
Speaker: And I think in that way, those objects that have sort of consistent context, at least spatial context, for such a long time, they have sort of accretive layers of identity.
Speaker: It becomes like geological strata in many ways.
Speaker: Because we think about provenance as a history of motion.
Speaker: When we trace the provenance of objects, we imagine it as the object moving around through space and time.
Speaker: But for these objects that have long histories within a single space or a single collection, I think it's interesting to think about the ways that personae and events and memories can become imprinted on those objects.
Speaker: And they're no less dynamic for having been in the same spot for hundreds of years.
Speaker: You know, the black armors that I mentioned in the display of the Saxon Arsenal, one of those was also acquired by
Speaker: by Bashford Dean from the then Prince of Saxony Ernst Heinrich in 1926.
Speaker: And it has, you know, thick layers of black paint, which would have dated to the period.
Speaker: That's what it would have looked like.
Speaker: But it's been repainted, obviously, over the course of its lifetime.
Speaker: And on the shield that protects the jousters left side, it actually has layers of names painted onto the shield underneath the layers of black paint.
Speaker: Oh, really?
Speaker: So each layer is a new name?
Speaker: Is a new name of a user who would have used it during probably the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
Speaker: So it has literally these strata of identity that have been superimposed onto the object itself.
Speaker: So in that way, you know, armors, I think, have a particular ability to become embodiments or vessels for identity because of this physical form that they take.
Speaker: They become a person standing in front of you very easily.
Speaker: But in the case of these armors, because they were worn by successive generations of people, I think they have, you know, this amazing depth of meaning.
Speaker: That's incredible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they're a lot more durable than textiles, so it makes them a little easier to study.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: I think the textile thing is an interesting point because, you know, so many of these armors, particularly the Saxon-Jostein armors that we're describing,
Speaker: tend to be somewhat plain.
Speaker: The surfaces are somewhat plain.
Speaker: People frequently walk past them because they tend to be very sort of clean lined, very modern looking.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But we have to imagine them during the period because they were surrounded by all of these beautiful textiles and felvets and plumed crests.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so the material culture that surrounded them was very sumptuous and lush.
Speaker: And so frequently when we see these objects, and I think that's the case for silver also when we look
Speaker: look at a silver tankard and we have to imagine the the sort of larger visual context that it would have inhabited candlelight yes candlelight um beautiful tablecloths and settings and all of these sorts of objects yeah
Speaker: Hi, everyone.
Speaker: I'm sorry that the interview ends there so abruptly.
Speaker: Unfortunately, we had an audio issue at the very end, so we lost the last couple minutes of our conversation.
Speaker: So just, you know, try to imagine one or two extra incisive questions and brilliant responses.
Speaker: Anyway, thank you so much to Chassica Kirchhoff.
Speaker: You can find her on Instagram at Chassica Feliz.
Speaker: That's C-H-A-S-S-I-C-A-F-E-L-E-S-E.
Speaker: And again, there are images of these armors at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
Speaker: Stay safe, stay healthy, and keep podcast binging.
Speaker: Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit, and I'm your host, Ben Miller.
