Promatech
Copper alloys basins have been used since the Merovingian period, at first exclusively as votive objects buried with the elites. A few centuries later, they acquired a liturgical function: they were used for the handwashing ritual and the collect of the alms during the Mass. Then, they gradually integrated the domestic space in the fourteenth century, as utensils dedicated to body care, especially washing and bathing. Although very simple before the fifteenth century, the forms of the basins diversified, according to the demand and the diffusion of the object into households. From this date, a specific part of the production – consisting of more or less concave circular containers of variable diameters (from 10 to 60 centimeters) –, introduced by the northern European workshops, was decorated with redundant iconographic themes representing biblical scenes, or plant, geometric and epigraphic patterns. This production has been very successful until the end of the seventeenth century, before it became obsolete.
This type of basins has been systematically called “alms basins” in historiography to distinguish them from the rest of the undecorated production. However, academics have neglected them since the end of the nineteenth century. Art historians, curators and collectors were the only ones to study them from that date, especially through the twentieth century, but much more rarely in the past few years. Their few contributions limited research perspectives to some recurring considerations that can be classified into two categories. Their approach focused either on the description of iconographic themes, ornaments and stylistic features , either on some presumptions about the attribution to a specific production area. A third category of publications completes the other two and includes studies that present and catalog items of a specific public or private collection. This focus can be explained by the insignificant presence of these objects in historical sources. Thus, alms basins are difficult to contextualize, despite the systematic attribution to Nuremberg workshops claimed in the historiography. Moreover, they generally do not reveal any mark indicating where they came from, when they were made or the identity of the artisans. These concerns have therefore stuck research into aporetic perspectives.
This observation led us to consider that extra research was needed on copper alloy alms basins involving methodologies from different disciplines, to combine expertise from several scientific fields. Given their intensive circulation and the broad range of their uses, it seems clear they were mass produced all over Europe to meet high demand but the concrete conditions of the production, in terms of organization, skills and materials, remain unclear. In addition, no one has yet taken advantage of the material features of these objects, providing valuable information about their life-courses. We would like therefore to propose a renewed analysis of copper alloy alms basins, produced in northern Europe between the fifteenth and the seventeenth century, by exploring practices, gestures, techniques, but also the commercial diffusion, the specificities of the market and how artisans acquired their skills. We will organize our research project into three objectives. A materiality-based approach will be the framework that will enable us 1) to develop an exhaustive description protocol focusing on technical features of the objects, 2) to characterize the production in order to highlight artisans’ practices and identify the alloys that were used and 3) to study both the organization of the production and the consumer market to get a better idea of the conditions that have contributed to make these basins must-haves.
Contacts
Anne-Clothilde Dumargne, David Strivay
Partners
Projet financé par la Politique scientifique Fédérale (Belspo) dans le cadre de l’appel BRAIN
