Karolina Stefanski

What is the America's Cup? The pinnacle of the sport of sailing and the oldest international trophy in sports, the America´s Cup is probably the most difficult to win. The silver trophy has been held by yacht clubs from only four countries, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland. For 170 years, this yachting competition has attracted nobles and titans of industry who have spent fortunes in a grand quest for the prestige of winning this elusive prize. The article explains a short history of the race and the manufacturing of the most expensive silver trophy of all times.

This article presents a comparison of three Charles-X-style jewelry caskets bearing First Empire decorative motifs designed by the renowned French silversmith Jean-Baptiste Claude Odiot (1763-1850) from drawings made by the painter Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) and by the stucco artisan Adrien Louis-Marie Cavelier (1785-1867). The designs for the caskets took as their inspiration drawings of an ‘ensemble de toilette’ commissioned in 1810 for Empress Marie-Louise for her bedroom in the Château de Fontainebleau. The three jewel caskets discussed in this essay display slight variations with respect to the ‘ensemble de toilette’ commissioned for Marie-Louise.

This paper is based on my PhD dissertation entitled "Transformation of Empire Style in Berlin, Warsaw and Vienna from 1797 to 1848". I will speak about Paris and to what extent it was the center of inspiration of the Empire style through the world of material culture, specifically silver.

The paper focuses on three major silver production centers during the first half of the 19th c., Berlin, Warsaw and Vienna and their relationship to the of origin of the French Empire style, Paris, during the above mentioned period. The connection between these cities through Napoleon's policies resulted in varying degrees of adaptations, transformations and rejections of French Empire style in the three major silver production cities. Paris served as a strong center and Berlin, Warsaw and Vienna as peripheries that received various impulses.

This paper showcases the cultural, political and socio-economic exchanges between these major silver manufacturing centers and how they played out on a decorative level.

The presentation examines the migration and mobility of silversmiths and their silver objects between Western and Central-Eastern Europe, in particular Paris and Berlin, Warsaw and Vienna, in the early nineteenth century (1797-1848). It focuses on cultural and technological transfers that were the results of the various types of mobility and migration and the diffusion of French Empire stylistic influences and technical know-how in silversmithing between Western and Central-Eastern Europe. This paper looks at objects as mobile carriers of stylistic adaptations and transformations as well as production diffusion methods. It also defines the heritage or background and migration and mobility patterns of silversmiths during that time and clarifies how their migration and mobility through training, educational and professional journeys shaped the silver production in each of the Central-Eastern European cities.
This study highlights the transcultural migration and mobility of European artisanal workers and how their heritage, education and how-know influenced the silver production in Central Eastern Europe during the early nineteenth century.