Samensmeden: Meesters van Zilver / Forged Together: Masters of Silver

t/m 17 januari 2021

 

Through the Forged Together exhibition, our museum is participating in a unique partnership project: Boijmans at the Neighbours, an initiative of the Droom en Daad Foundation. The project enables the collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen to continue to be on display and accessible in the city of Rotterdam and environs while the museum is closed for renovations. Watch the video here.


The exhibition

Our exhibition space on the ground floor has been set up as a special room where visitors can admire silver showpieces as well as paintings by Dutch masters like Jan Steen and Gerard Dou. The combination of the Dutch silver on display – beakers, tobacco boxes and salt cellars – and masterpieces in which these same objects are beautifully depicted, makes the exhibition much more than just the sum of its parts.


Two collections forged together

Silver forges together Museum Boijmans van Beuningen’s collection and our own collection that illustrates the history of silversmiths and Assay Office assayers. From 1807 to 1987, the Assay Office for gold and silver fell under the Ministry of Finance. Alongside maker’s marks, coats of arms of cities and date letters, silver objects were also stamped with tax marks. The assayers of the Assay Office literally left their mark on Museum Boijmans van Beuningen’s silver objects. The assaying process is revealed in this exhibition, along with the tools assayers used, such as punches.

In the display case next to the painting The Gold Weigher by Salomon Koninck (1654) you can see a real set of scales for weighing gold and a box of coin weights from our collection, similar to what is depicted in the painting.

        

 

Collection of the Assay Office for Gold and Silver

On the first floor of the museum, you can view a selection from the collection of the Assay Office for Gold and Silver, including a unique group portrait of the governors of the Amsterdam gold- and silversmiths’ guild by Jurriaen Pool.

 

Sponsored by: Droom en Daad Foundation