Episoder
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After the end of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918, several departments of the huge but now defunct imperial household were amalgamated under the name of the “Court Silver and Table Room“ and opened to the public in 1923 with displays of objects from the collection of porcelain, the Court Confectionery, the Court Wine Cellars, the Court Kitchens and the Court Linen Room. On your tour today you will encounter various aspects of the former imperial court household and gain an insight into the glittering world of Habsburg banquets. In front of you is a selection of copper vessels, pans and moulds which convey an idea of the range of different activities carried out in the court kitchens: the turbot kettles, water kettles, asparagus pans, the “Olio cauldrons” and the warming dishes which held live coals in their lids to keep the dishes warm – all of these objects testify to the enormous effort required to cater for a court household numbering up to 5,000 individuals. Copper moulds were used in countless variations for dishes in aspic (for example brawn), sponge cakes, creams, nougat and of course for the imperial version of the famous Viennese cake called “Gugelhupf”, and give an impression of the skills and arts of the Court Confectionery and Desserts Kitchen. At that time, copper was commonly used for kitchen utensils in aristocratic or middle-class households. It has the advantage that it is a good conductor of heat; however, its one disadvantage is that poisonous verdigris can form if it comes into contact with acid foodstuffs. That is why the utensils had to be tinned on the inside and regularly checked for any defects in the tin.
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Manglende episoder?
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In the first room of the Old Court Silver and Table Room with its oak display cases dating from the time of the monarchy you will see individual items or pieces from Old Vienna, Hungarian and Bohemian services as well as examples of white and gold sanitary porcelain from Bohemia. Note the fine glass services made by the firm of Lobmeyr in Vienna with different variations in the way they have been cut. The green glasses were used for Rhenish wines. The display case in the centre of the room contains the imperial silver cutlery. This is still used today for state banquets. The first large set was supplied by Stephan Mayerhofer before 1837; later orders went to his successors Mayerhofer and Klinkosch and subsequently to Joseph Karl Klinkosch, Purveyor to the Imperial Household. A special feature here is the decoration on the side of the cutlery: the ever-popular fiddle and thread pattern.
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The central display case contains items from the imperial Linen Room. Up to 1872 the linen of the imperial household was marked with various stamps and yellow dye; it was not until later that monograms and crowns were embroidered on the individual items. Towels and bedlinen used to be made exclusively of fine white linen. It was not until the end of the 19th century that towels made of piqué, and later of terrycloth, came into use. Various porcelain services in the display cases provide a picture of how tastes changed over the course of time. At the beginning of the 19th century the tableware for everyday use in the reigns of Emperors Franz I and Ferdinand I changed very little: plain white porcelain with a smooth gold rim; only the imperial eagle gives any clues as to the current fashion or the individual style of the craftsman who painted these items. In the display case to the left of the doorway to the next room you can see pieces from the “State Visit Service” which was used until recently as a formal service for state banquets; you will be hearing more about this later on in the tour. During the time of the monarchy it was known as the “Court Form Service” and was used for evening dinners attended by the imperial family.
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Before Empress Elisabeth had her own bathroom installed in 1876 – the first member of the Austrian imperial family to do so – the palace had no bathrooms in the modern sense of the word. Even after this, the majority of those belonging to the court household had to make do with sets of sanitary porcelain consisting of washbasins, water jugs, footbaths, shaving bowls, soap dishes, chamber pots and so on. While these sets were not uniform, the majority of items were made of white porcelain and decorated with a gold rim and a gold imperial eagle.
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A remarkable exhibit here is the unusual English dinner service that Empress Elisabeth gave to Emperor Franz Joseph for his hunting lodge at Offensee. Dating to 1870, it was designed by William Coleman and is decorated with naturalistic representations of insects, birds, sea creatures and plants.
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The Grand Vermeil is without doubt one of the most important services in the Court Silver Room. A major work of French goldsmith’s art, it originally included articles for 40 place settings. Around 1850 it was enlarged to 140 settings by Viennese silversmiths. Today this magnificent service consists of a total of 4500 items and weighs over 1,000 kg. It is made of fire-gilt silver which is called “vermeil” in French. It also has an interesting history, being closely connected to the rise and fall of Napoleon. The person who commissioned this sumptuous service in 1808 was probably Eugène de Beauharnais, Napoleon’s stepson. It was executed by the Parisian goldsmith Martin-Guillaume Biennais and the Milanese goldsmith Eugenio Brusa. The service was intended for use at the court in Milan, where Beauharnais governed as viceroy from 1805 to 1814/15. After its completion the service was brought to Milan, but following the defeat of Napoleon the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia fell to Austria. The conditions laid down by the Vienna Congress required Emperor Franz to purchase the service from Eugène de Beauharnais. On the occasion of his fourth marriage to Caroline Auguste he had the service taken to Vienna in 1816 after the engraved arms of Napoleon as King of Italy had been replaced with his own as Emperor of Austria.
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This is the last room in the old part of the former Court Silver and Table Room. In the central display case are silver plates, bowls, casseroles and terrines which give an impression of the range of court table silver needed for daily use. The solid silver service bears the imperial arms and is notable for its simple and restrained elegance. The large amount of silverware can be explained by the fact that the Viennese court dined off silver or gold plates. Porcelain, which had been produced in Europe from 1710, was for a long time only used for the soup and dessert courses; all other dishes continued to be served on silver plates. It was not until during the 19th century that porcelain services began to be used for meals taken in the family circle. The showcases to the side contain gilded table decorations; the stands for sweetmeats and the bronze-gilt girandoles are part of the New French centrepiece which you will see later on in the tour.
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The historic dinner service known as the “Court Form Service” which was used for state banquets up to the year 2000, far beyond the end of the monarchy, was made at the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory. The silver plates formerly used at court for dining were demoted in the Republic to serving as cover plates, while the food was served on the porcelain service known in the era of the Republic as the “State Visit Service”. It has a white ground, a delicate gold rim with a pattern of dots and a double eagle in black, red and gold. It is also interesting in terms of technique: the decoration was applied to the porcelain by means of a lithographic gold and polychrome transfer process, a technique invented around 1855. From this time onwards, hand-painting was superseded by the rationalised processes of mass-production. Silver cutlery made by Josef Carl Klinkosch and glasses by the company of Josef. & Ludwig. Lobmeyr complement the State Visit Service. The crowning feature of the place setting is the napkin arranged in the elaborate “Imperial Fold”, forming a hollow enclosing a small bread roll. This was only allowed to be used at court dinners when the emperor was present, and its technique was a well-kept secret that was only handed down by word of mouth to selected individuals. Even today, it may only be used on the occasion of state visits by crowned heads and presidents, and only two people know – and carefully guard – the secret of the technique!
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Whenever Empress Elisabeth travelled to the villa called the Achilleion that had been built for her on the island of Corfu, she used the yacht Miramare. On board she used a specially made dinner service and cutlery made of silver-plated alpaca; the pattern of the service was from the range offered by the Arthur Krupp metalware factory at Berndorf around 1890. The only clue to its illustrious use is an engraved coat of arms with a dolphin surmounted by the imperial crown. On the other side of the display case you can see further items bearing the famous dolphin mark which decorated all the objects that were for the personal use of the empress during her stays in Greece. The silver cutlery also displayed here was made by a Trieste silversmith and was also intended for use at the Achilleion.
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The monumental Milan centrepiece was commissioned for the coronation of Emperor Ferdinand as king of Lombardy-Venetia in 1838. It is the most elaborate ensemble in the Imperial Silver Collection and together with its mirror plateaus it can be extended to a length of 30 metres. On the central piece you can see the allegorical figures of Lombardia with her mural crown and a horn of plenty together with Venetia with the doge’s cap and the lion of St Mark, while around the rim of the plateau dancing genii alternate with candelabra. Standing before this impressive centrepiece one can vividly imagine the magnificence of imperial banquets, with the tables decorated with luxuriant bouquets of flowers as well as arrangements of fruit and sweetmeats. The Classicistic figures on the centrepiece derive from the tradition of Baroque table decorations which, depending on the occasion for the meal, drew on elements of the classical pantheon, or the arts of war or love.
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There was a centuries-old tradition at the Viennese court according to which the emperor and empress washed the feet of 12 men and 12 women each year on Holy Thursday, in remembrance of the act of humility performed by Christ in washing the feet of his disciples. The ceremony was performed on elderly paupers, who presented themselves at court on Holy Thursday, washed and dressed in clean clothes and having undergone a careful medical examination. After the foot-washing ceremony they were served a meal consisting of traditional Lenten fare and then presented with the gifts of a lidded earthenware jug filled with white wine, a silver beaker marked with the double eagle and the year, dishes of food and a pouch containing 30 silver coins, a reference to the thirty pieces of silver received by Judas for betraying Christ. The two gold lavabo garnitures or sets were made by the foremost Augsburg silversmiths of the 18th century. They were used at Habsburg baptisms, for ceremonial ablutions at table and for the footwashing ceremony at Easter.
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This desert service, formerly known as the Laxenburg Service, was commissioned from the Viennese Porcelain Manufactory in 1824 to mark the marriage of Archduke Franz Carl to Princess Sophie of Bavaria, the parents of the future Emperor Franz Joseph. At the end of the 18th century, Emperor Franz I, the bridegroom’s father, had had the Franzensburg built at Laxenburg, a Habsburg summer residence near Vienna. It was designed as a monument to the Habsburg dynasty, and its life-size statues, paintings, coats of arms and stained glass windows were intended to glorify the family’s history. The dynastic idea even manifested itself in the dinner service, as you can see here. Besides the arms and portraits of earlier Habsburg rulers and their consorts, 60 plates known as “Ruin Plates” display views of fortresses and castles belonging to the Habsburg dynasty. It is no coincidence that the neo-Gothic forms of the centrepiece are reminiscent of reliquary shrines, chalices and other ecclesiastical utensils. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, Emperor Franz was at pains to compensate for the loss of the sacred office of the German imperial title and to legitimise the divinely sanctioned nature and continuity of the Habsburg dynasty in the newly-created hereditary Austrian empire. Thus, even the dinner services with portraits of their ancestors were imbued with an almost liturgical character, as it were staking a claim on eternity.
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This service came to Vienna from Castle Miramare near Trieste, the former residence of Archduke Ferdinand Max, later to become Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. The archduke was the younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph. In 1854 he became commander-in-chief of the imperial and royal navy. In 1864 he accepted the emperorship of Mexico, but failed to establish himself in his new empire. He was taken prisoner by the leader of the republican forces, Benito Juarez, who had him shot by firing squad in 1867. You will hear more about this episode in the Imperial Apartments. The dinner service is a product of the Herend porcelain manufactory in Hungary, which initially specialised in copies of Chinese models. Emperor Maximilian ordered this service for his residence in Chapultepek in 1865. Moritz Fischer, the owner of the manufactory, was permitted to display the service in 1867 at the Paris World Exhibition as an advertisement for Herend’s wares. By the time the exhibition had ended Maximilian was dead, and the service was never sent to Mexico.
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This white and gold dinner service was acquired for Emperor Ferdinand in 1851. Ferdinand, nicknamed “the Good-Natured” by the people, abdicated from the throne during the course of the bourgeois revolution of 1848 in favour of his young nephew, Franz Joseph. Ferdinand subsequently moved to the fortress at Prague, where he lived in quiet retirement until his death in 1875. The white and gold dinner service was ordered for his new household in Prague from the porcelain manufactory of the Counts of Thun at Klösterle in Bohemia.The design of the service was the very height of fashion at that time. Tastes had changed around the middle of the century, with the emphatically clear lines of the Biedermeier era giving way to a softer, more flowing formal idiom. The rich gold decoration expresses the growing need to demonstrate feudal magnificence, a tendency that also made itself felt at the imperial Viennese court.
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One of the first new acquisitions made for the young Emperor Franz Joseph after his accession during the revolution of 1848 was the “New French Centrepiece”, commissioned in Paris in 1850/51. This decorative bronze-gilt piece surpasses the other centrepieces by far in the opulence of its decoration. The huge candelabra have a richly decorated superstructure composed of scrolls and rocaille work and are animated by playful putti, leaping game animals and fluttering birds. The need for a centrepiece of this size had arisen because the young emperor used to issue regular invitations to his advisors and ministers to dine at court. Under the influence of Archduchess Sophie, neo-Baroque and neo-Rococo elements became popular at court, a circumstance that was particularly reflected in the way the apartments were furnished but also had an influence on the design of utensils for the dining table.
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The service with the green ribbons was a precious gift from the French king, Louis XV, to Empress Maria Theresa. It was intended as a sign of increasing rapprochement between France and Austria after the bloody wars of succession. Green intertwining ribbons represent the main decorative element, while the forms of the individual items are modelled on Baroque goldsmith’s work. Between the ribbons are delicate Rococo scenes after paintings by François Boucher. They represent allegories of love, poetry, music, painting and sculpture or contain references to world literature from Homer to Molière. The service is a magnificent example of the elegant wares produced by the royal French porcelain manufactory at Sèvres, founded in 1738. They are made of a special porcelain known as “frit”, which, while more fragile, allows the colours to develop a particularly intense radiance due to the lower firing temperature. The brilliant green of this service had only been developed a short time previously. It was used just this once with the double ribbon motif to make this gift for Maria Theresa.
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In 1777 Emperor Joseph II visited his sister, the French queen Marie Antoinette, at Versailles. On his return he brought with him a total of 500 costly porcelain objects from Sèvres, including the apple-green dinner service and four magnificent tureens, three of which have been preserved in the Imperial Silver Collection. The round Olio tureen – used for a nourishing soup – and the two soup tureens have four curving legs and rest on stands. The sculptural gilded decoration representing sheaves of corn together with the fruit, agricultural produce, flowers, eggs, sea creatures as well as gardening and agricultural tools painted in the medallions, symbolise fertility and the fruitful cultivation of Nature.
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The folding of table napkins into imaginative shapes is an old but unfortunately dying art. These complex creations imitating the shapes of fans, fish, shells, swans, ducks or flowers were used as table decorations above all in the early Baroque era. They can only be achieved with napkins of the finest linen and a certain size. The imperial table napkin measuring one square metre is eminently suited for this, and there still exists a wealth of models from the 17th century for these artistic creations.
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The Gold Service was the most magnificent porcelain service of the Viennese court. Each individual piece of this dinner service with settings for twelve people is covered with polished gold; some of them are even gilded inside and underneath. The delicate matt gold ornaments are styled on the decorative friezes of Antiquity. Made in 1814, the Gold Service is a masterpiece of the Viennese Porcelain Manufactory. It was urgently needed, as the gold service appropriate to an imperial court had been melted down for coin during the wars against Napoleon. When Emperor Franz visited Paris in 1814 and it emerged that Vienna was to host a large congress of all the European powers, this service was duly ordered from the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory. Thus the court had – at least as far as appearances were concerned – a substitute service for the use at state banquets.
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