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Director’s Choice – An 18th Century Gold Masterpiece By Otto Christian Sahler
The master chaser Johann Otto Christian Saler (Augsburg 1733 - Berlin 1810) was a portraitist, engraver and wax-modeller. Saler, or Sahler, made wax portraits of the Prussian and Russian royal families. He taught drawing at The Akademie in Berlin from 1770. "Hr. Otto Sahler, Wachsbossierer, u. Pastellmaler, lehret die Anfangsgünde im Zeichnen, w. in der Siropstr." according to the Prussian Adre-Kalender...Berlin und Potsdam for 1798. He is identified as the Johann Otto Sahler who made the copy "auf Röthelart" (red chalk) after a head of Van Dyck in Dresden in 1765. However, this beautiful gold box clearly demonstrates Sahler’s background as modeller, in the exquisite cast scenes portrayed in the panels and as a master chaser in the number different tools used to achieve the vast array of textures and depth of the bas-relief. The perfection of the stippling, the softness of the sweeping trees and the subtleties of the details in the faces of the huntsmen and beasts of quarry are outstanding and this is one of the few boxes to have survived bearing this genius’s signature. It is an easy selection as this week’s Director’s Choice.
