aves. It would not be easy to select a more characteristic specimen of
antique table-plate. The inventories of similar articles once possessed
by the French king, Charles V., and his brother, the Duke of Anjou, King
of Naples and Provence (preserved in the Royal Library, Paris), give
descriptive details of similar quaint pieces of art-manufacture, in
which the most grotesque and heterogeneous features are combined, and
the work enriched by precious stones and enamels. Jules Labarte
observes, "the artists of that period indulged in strange flights of
fancy in designing plate for the table, they especially delighted in
grotesque subjects: a ewer or a cup may often be seen in the shape of a
man, animal, or flower, while a monstrous combination of several human
figures serves to form the design of a vase."

[Illustration: Fig. 70.]

But quaint and fanciful as were the works of the Parisian goldsmiths,
they were outdone by the grotesque designs of the German artificers.
They invented drinking-cups of the strangest form, the whole animal
kingdom, fabulous and real, birds, and sea-monsters, were constructed to
hold liquids. A table laid out with an abundance of this
strangely-designed plate, must have had a ludicrous effect. Many of
their works, though costly in character, refined in execution, and
thoroughly artistic in detail, are absolute caricatures. There is one in
Lord Londesborough's collection, and another in that of Baron
Rothschild, made in the form of a bagpipe; the bag holds wine, and is
supported on human feet; arms emerge from the sides and play on the
chanter, which is elongated from the nose of a grotesque face, the hair
a mass of foliage. Dozens of similar examples might be cited, of the
most extraordinary invention, which the metal-workers of the seventeenth
century particularly gave their imaginations licence to construct.
Indeed, the German artists of that period seem to have had a spice of
lunacy in their compositions, and the works of Breughel were rivalled
and outdone by many others whose fancies were of most unearthly type.
Salvator Rosa in Italy, and Callot in France, occasionally depicted
what their grotesque and mystic imaginings suggested, and Teniers gave
the world witch-pictures; but for the wild and wondrous, Germany has
always carried the palm from the rest of the world in art as in
literature.

[Illustration: Fig. 71.]

[Illustration: Fig. 72.]

We engrave a fine example of a vase handle