File:BLW Brass dish, 1500-50.jpg

1500-50
Germany
Brass

The image of a leaping stag was popular on brass dishes in the 16th century. This scene has been impressed on the metal from behind using punches. Stamps were also used repeatedly in the workshop as a way of producing dishes quickly in large quantities. An image almost identical to this one can be seen on another dish in the V&A (M.352-1924). The basic stamp of the stag's body is identical, suggesting it may have come from the same workshop. Other details are applied freehand accounting for the slight differences in finished product.

Early basins adopted a form which had been popular since medieval times. The diameter was never very large and the rims correspondingly deep. The whole of the inside bottom was covered in relief decoration. The subject matter usually fell into three categories: scenes from classical antiquity, themes from the Old or New Testament or allegorical figures personifying vices and virtues. Embossed in the centre of this dish is a figure of a running stag. The stag, in secular art, is the attribute of the huntress, Diana, who changed the hunter Acteon into a stag. Known for its speed and sharp senses, thus making capture difficult, the stag is an attribute of hearing and of prudence.

Centres of brass production in late medieval Europe tended to be situated close to plentiful sources of calamine, the carbonate of zinc which when smelted with copper produced the brass alloy. Thus the brass industry was concentrated between the rivers Meuse and the Rhine, where the most important deposits of calamine lie. The main centres of production were the Attenberg and Holberg mines, both near Aachen, and the Kornelim�nster and Gressenich which lie between Givet and Li�ge. The two latter mines were the principal sources of supply for the town of Dinant which was the biggest centre of brass production until the town was sacked by the Duke of Burgundy in 1466. Refugee brass workers found their way to neighbouring towns such as Brussels, Namur and Malines. Brass production in Nuremberg and Aachen assumed greater importance after the decline of Dinant.