A silver hand washing set comprising a ewer and basin intended for use at the table, for the ritual ablution of the hands of both host and guests known in Portuguese as água-às-mãos. The ewer, in plain, undecorated silver, of baluster-like shape, with an ovoid body (with a broad shoulder) resting on a low circular stepped foot and a simple disc-shaped knot, set with a waisted neck and flared spout, features a high curling handle in the form of a question mark. Raised from sheet silver and turned on a lathe, the striations from the shaping clearly visible on the surface of the ewer, its shape is reminiscent of an Ancient Greek oinochóe, a wine vessel characterised by an ovoid body resting on a circular foot fitted with a high, curling handle, a classically-derived shape which became fashionable in the 1530s, and has remained so ever since. One of the first recorded examples of Portuguese ewers (29 cm in height) following this shape was made around 1551 by Luís Gonçalves, part of a hand washing set with the Portuguese royal coat of arms, which belongs to the Chapel of the University of Coimbra. The shaped circular basin, with a very deep, straight cavetto and a small hemispherical boss in the centre, raised from sheet silver and turned, features a wide shaped rim - with four semi-circular depressions and curly brackets on the edge - a shaped rim known in Portugal as de quatro entalhes,“with four [semi-circular] cuts” apparently of Iberian invention, a design that was copied in Chinese porcelain, of which a rare example (with the coat of arms of Rodrigo da Costa, viceroy of India) from ca. 1690-1710 survives. The edge of the basin was thickened by the addition of a half round silver wire soldered to the flat shaped rim.
Although not originally conceived as a set, according to the tradition of the family - who sold them at Christie’s Geneva in 1976 - the basin and ewer had been together for many generations. While seventeenth-century Portuguese silver, until the last decades of the century, apart from being rare is also mostly unmarked, the chronology of these two pieces - and the few known identical examples in Portuguese private and public collections - is a matter of debate. Two matching basins (without the small central boss) are known, one, slightly smaller (6.5 x Ø 34.6 cm) in the Palácio Nacional da Ajuda, Lisbon (inv. no. 10713) is set with a matching water jug of similar undecorated taste - a jarro de pico - and has been dated to the late seventeenth century. The second (6.8 x Ø 39.3 cm), larger than the first one but smaller than our example, belongs to the collection of the Museu-Escola de Artes Decorativas Portuguesas (Fundação Ricardo do Espírito Santo Silva), Lisbon (inv. no. 69) bears a maker’s mark attributed to António Martins de Almeida (L.123, M.A.) and the mark of Lisbon (assayer’s mark), a crowned “L” used from the late seventeenth century until ca. 1720 (L.21/22, M.A.).
Our present ewer also bears an assayer’s mark for Lisbon of the same period (L.23, M.A.) and two other unidentified marks. A similar ewer (34.4 x Ø 10 cm), taller and differing only in its more complex, turned foot, in the Museu Abade de Baçal, Bragança (inv. no. 1112) bears similar Lisbon marks. Both the shape and style of the aforemen- tioned ewers and basins are somewhat inconsistent with such a late date and may have been marked at a later date in order to be sold according to new laws established around 1690. This becomes evident when comparing these pieces with other known objects made by António Martins de Almeida (who marked as his one of the basins), who was responsible for adding Baroque-style feet and borders to early sixteenth-century drinking bowls (salvas) from the Portuguese royal collection.
