J Lowy Wien Brass Boxes Pair Etched Harbour Scene Vienna Austria Antique Vintage For Sale

Two brass boxes, each with a hinged lid etched with a harbour scene, a quay and the masts and derricks of ships worked in line against a stippled ground. Both are stamped on the underside with an oval reading J. LOWY WIEN, Lowy of Vienna. The lids are heavy sheet brass set into a formed body with riveted corners, and the etching is bitten rather than engraved, which is why the lines hold their width all the way along.

Vienna around 1900 was the most interesting place in Europe to make a small metal object. The Wiener Werkstatte is the name everybody knows, but it sat on top of a dense trade of independent metalworkers supplying the city\'s shops, and Lowy was one of them. What that trade understood, and what the Werkstatte argued for in print, was that a cigarette box or an inkstand deserved the same attention as a building, because it was the object a person actually touched every day. The etched harbour here is a workshop subject rather than a named view, printed as a resist and bitten in acid, which gives a tonal depth that hand engraving cannot reach at this price.

Heavy overall toning to the brass with darker patches and some verdigris spotting at the corners and along the hinge lines. The etched scenes are complete and fully readable on both. Surface scratching across the lids and bodies throughout. The marks are clear on both