When the time for celebrations came around at a mint, silver bells like these made an appearance – during festive processions, for example. They were probably worn by an apprentice coiner, who used them to accessorise his multi-coloured robe and cap. We know about this from several copperplate engravings of a miners' procession in the Plauen valley near Dresden in 1719. The occasion was the marriage of Electoral Prince Friedrich August of Saxony to Archduchess Maria Josepha of Austria.
The fourteen silver bells are from the former Dresden Mint. They were donated by mint employees or people connected to the mint. Eight of the bells date to the period from 1629 to 1703, while the other six are undated. Twelve of the bells are engraved with the giver's name.
The donors include several people who worked at the Dresden Mint at the time: the mint accountant and later mint master Constantin Rothe, the mint's master smith, Amos Meischel, and its punch cutter, Paul Walter. They donated four of the bells. The Mansfeld mint master Anton Bernhard Koburger and the Berlin mint assayer Johann Liebmann each bequeathed a bell. The donors also include two master masons, Johann Georg Starcke and Johann Siegmund Küffner.
Just a few years before the Dresden Mint shut down, it sold the bells to the medallist and engraver Carl Reinhard Krüger. They found their way into the Münzkabinett collection from his estate in 1879.
Further Media
- Material & Technique
- Silver, embossed, engraved, with eyelet, lower half (formerly) simply slotted, half of the lower bell part is missing and has cracks starting from both holes
- Museum
- Münzkabinett
- Location & Dating
- Saxony, 1629
- Inventory number
- 1879/71