Spanish Colonial Silver Incense Boat

Silver Incense Boat

This incense boat of chased and embossed silver stands on a raised, circular base. The hollow body is based on the stylised form of a sailing ship. The sides are decorated with scrolling foliage and with a heart emblem – most probably meant to represent the Sacred Heart of Jesus – on each side. The boat form is accented by a fretted balustrade that encircles the stern. The main deck is decorated with rococo scrolls. The back of the boat rises up in a dramatic wave-like curl or stylised poop deck on which there sits a solid-cast finial. A hinged lid allows the decking to open to allow the incense to be scooped out.

The rococo styling suggests an eighteenth century dating rather than earlier. However, the swirling foliate motifs also relate to the Islamic Moorish antecedents of Iberian art which was accentuated with the leafy motifs already employed in South and Central American art of the period.

Incense containers inspired by boat forms are known from the fifteenth century and became popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth century in Portugal and Spain and their colonies and possessions. The form appears to derive from Spain and Portugal’s extraordinary maritime and trade interests at the time.

The foot attaches to the base by means of a screw with a hand-cut thread. The item has a maker’s mark stamped to the bow, with the initials ‘SMD’.

Silver incense boats with similar fretted balustrades tend to be dated to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Examples are illustrated in Bargellini (1993, p. 61), Esteras Martin (1994, p. 61, 93, 103, 117). Many of these also have similar swirling vegetal motifs.

Luis Ribera, A., & H.H. Schenone, Plateria Sudamericana de los Siglos XVII-XX, Hirmer Verlag Muchen, 1981; Bargellini, C. et al, Mexican Silver/Mexicaans Zilver, Europalia93 Mexico, 1993; and Esteras Martin , C., La Plateria en el Reino de Guatemala, Siglos XVI-XIX, Fundacion Albergue Hermano Pedro, 1994.

UK art market.