Muff with a band of brocade

The immensely prolific and talented Czech printmaker Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) was employed as an artist and cataloguer in the household of Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, who was one of the greatest art collectors of his era, between 1636 and 1644. The Earl, a victim of the English Civil War, fled overseas and died in 1646; Hollar himself moved with his family to Antwerp in 1644, where this etching would have been made. The return of political stability led to Hollar's return to London in 1652, where he lived and worked until his death.

If you want to know what topographical landmarks, rulers and objects looked like in 17th century Europe, and who andwhat mattered, you need go no further than Hollar. Soemtimes his subjects were monarchs, like Charles I, at whose court Hollar worked. And sometimes they were humbler creatures or objects: butterflies, mothes, seashells or, as here, muffs. He made nine different ethcings of these sensuous yet functional fashion accessories. In this eara, anyone who was anyone, female (mostly) or male, would keep their hands warm in them - they were essential in bitterly cold northern winters and underheated houses and churches.

Hollar was attracted to muffs because of their challenge to a master-etcher like him. His ability to convey the softness of the fur texture - built up by thousands of hair's-breadth lines engraved with his etching needle on to a copper plate - is little short of miraculous. It's as if muffs were invented just for Hollar to depict, rather like poppy fields 250 years later for Monet. The power and beauty of this etching belies its intimate scale.

See:

Mark Stocker, 'Wenceslaus Hollar...' in Athol McCredie (ed.), Ten x Ten: Art at Te Papa (Wellington, 2017), pp. 46-47.

Mark Stocker, 'Wenceslaus Hollar: Etching the 17th century', http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/tag/wenceslaus-hollar/

Dr Mark Stocker             Curator, Historical International Art       April 2017