The puzzle of the amber lace frame from Malbork

Rachel King

Fot. 2. Stojak do wyrobu koronek widok z tyłu i wewnętrzna szufladka |Lace making stand rear view and interior drawer (fot. L. B. Okońscy,Muzeum Zamkowe w Malborku)

Very few surviving amber objects carry names. Those that do, usually give the name of their maker, and sometimes the place of their making. The exceptions can be counted on one hand. The Malbork Amber Museum houses a curious contraption, usually said to be a lace-maker.

It comprises a box-like stand with interior drawer. The top of the box supports a cushion and a frame with winder. It appears to be an incomplete small version of the bolster frames used with horseshoe shaped cushions. The lace is wound onto the padded spindle as it is made, while the bobbins are spread across the cushion by the maker. A ‘toy’ in the historic sense of the word, it could have been used for making miniature bobbin lace.

The carcase of the case has been encrusted with amber. One of the mosaiced veneer pieces, underlaid with metal foil for effect, bears the inscription: “Paul Morthurst, Londen”. The others bear images of a female in draped clothing with a bird on her arm leaning against a column, and figures in an exchange. They show the influence of neo-classical literature and art and its penchant for allegorical subjects. Their mottos, in German, refer to a beloved, to truth and to clear vision, all motifs typical of the later 18 th century, and the decades shaped by Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther. The unity of text, figural form and decorative flourish suggest that each of

the panels has been engraved by the same hand. With mottos in German, rather than the usual French, it is also possible that the emblems are of the maker’s own invention.

London, German mottoes, amber from the Baltic, a lace maker? What can we make of this puzzling combination? Recent research has identified Paul Morthurst and proposed a link between these apparently disparate elements.

Paul Morthurst (alternative spelling Morthorst) was German. He baptised a Lutheran in Flensburg, Schleswig Holstein, in March 1729. Flensburg was an important sea-faring town at the western extreme of the Baltic sea. Paul was one of at least four children. He followed Oelgarth Christina (b. 1724), Hans Hinrich Mothorst (b. 1725) a painter, who decorated the Heilig-Geist Kirche in Barmstedt around 1754-56, and Metta Catharina (b. 1727). Their father was Hans Hinrich Morthurst.