Platter

The platter, i.e., a tableware in the form of a plate placed on a leg or a stand, usually used for serving cakes and fruit, consisting of a glass bowl in a silver frame, is one of the examples of the refined workshop of Karol Rotkiel, a goldsmith from Lublin working at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Unfortunately, we do not know much about the artist's life. Karol Rotkiel was born in 1800 in Warsaw, but it was in Italian goldsmith workshops that he acquired his skills. After returning to Poland in 1832, he settled in Lublin where he opened a goldsmith's workshop located in his tenement house at 21 Krakowskie Przedmieście Street. The same building also housed the famous English Hotel run by his wife Ewa. Rotkiel's wares are classicist with baroque elements, which is evidenced using the puckering technique popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, i.e., decorative shaping of the surface of an object to obtain freely arranged semi-circular or teardrop-shaped buttons, sometimes forming whole clusters. The presented silver platter with a bowl made of polished, engraved and coloured glass, placed on the writhing back of a dolphin figure, is an example of the workshop of the artist who, thanks to the quality of his products, became one of the most eminent Polish goldsmiths active in the first half of the 19th century. It is therefore not surprising that objects coming from his workshop in Lublin make an interesting addition to both public and private collections not only in Poland, but also worldwide. Thus, silver platters, sugar bowls, salt cellars, milk vessels, trays or jugs, which came from the master's hand, appearing at auctions both in Poland and abroad fetch prices ranging from a few to several thousand euros.