Austrian Rococo Style Silver and Enamel Desk Clock

Austrian-Hungarian gilt silver and enamel painted miniature clock.

• Solid silver & hand-painted enamel miniature clock, of traditional upright form, the corners set with columns, canopy mounted with figural finials.
• The front, sides and back hand-painted with mythological scenes in enamel, depicting Mercury and Roma.
• Hallmarked Austrian-Hungarian silver, makers mark HR (Hermann Ratzersdorfer).

Born in Bratislava in 1819, Hermann Ratzersdorfer moved to Vienna at the beginning of the 1840s, where he started working as a silversmith. He specialized in silver and gold objects of vertu, tableware and jewelry, often enameled and decorated in the style known as Historicism. He was also acclaimed for his rock crystal objects.

In 1843, he registered his first mark; two years later, he exhibited at the Viennese Trade Exhibition and in 1851, he participated at the London Exhibition winning a medal for a beautifully ornate toilet glass. Four years later, he won the second prize at the Paris Exhibition and in 1871, at the London Exhibition, he was given a diploma of honor and praised for his colorful creation in the Neo-Renaissance style (Roy Strong, The Collector's Encyclopedia, Victoriana to Art Deco, Studio Editions, 1990, p. 224).