Gustaf Banér and Christina Sture’s Drinking Cup from...

Art Bulletin ofNationalmuseumStockholm

Volume 22

Gustaf Banér and Christina Sture’s Drinking Cup from 1589

Micael ErnstellCurator, Applied Art and Design

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 22, 2015

© Stockholms Auktionsverk, Stockholm (Fig. 5, p. 35)© Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels (Fig. 2, p. 38)© Teylers Museum, Haarlem (Fig. 3, p. 39)© Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Shelfmark: Riserva.S.81(int.2) (Fig. 2, p. 42)© Galerie Tarantino, Paris (Figs. 3–4, p. 43)© Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain (Figs. 3–4, pp. 46–47)© National Library of Sweden, Stockholm (Figs. 5–6, pp. 48–49)© Uppsala Auktionskammare, Uppsala (Fig. 1, p. 51)© Landsarkivet, Gothenburg/Johan Pihlgren (Fig. 3, p. 55)© Västergötlands museum, Skara (Fig. 4, p. 55)© Svensk Form Design Archive/Centre for Business History (Fig. 2, p. 58)© Svenskt Tenn Archive and Collection, Stockholm (Fig. 4, p. 60)© Denise Grünstein (Fig. 5, p. 152)© The National Gallery, London (Figs. 1–3, 6–7, 17, pp. 167–169, 172–173, 179)© The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo/Jarre Anne Hansteen, CC-BY-NC (Fig. 8, p. 174)© Nicholas Penny (Figs. 9–10, 12–14, 16, pp. 175, 177, 179)© Museum Gustavianum, Uppsala (Fig. 11, p. 176)© Getty Museum CC-BY. Digital image courtesy of the Gettys Open Content Program (Fig. 15, p. 178)© The Swedish Royal Court/Håkan Lind (Fig. 9, p. 188)© Eva-Lena Bergström (Figs. 1, 3–4, 6–7, 9, pp. 191–192, 194–196, 198)© Statens Museum for Kunst/National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, CC-PD (Fig. 2, p. 193)© The Nordic Museum, Stockholm/Karolina Kristensson (Fig. 5, p. 195)

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, is published with generous support from the Friends of the Nationalmuseum.

Nationalmuseum collaborates with Svenska Dagbladet and Grand Hôtel Stockholm. We would also like to thank FCB Fältman & Malmén.

Cover IllustrationAnne Vallayer (1744–1818), Portrait of a Violinist, 1773. Oil on canvas, 116 x 96 cm. Purchase: The Wiros Fund. Nationalmuseum, NM 7297.

PublisherBerndt Arell, Director General

EditorJanna Herder

Editorial CommitteeJanna Herder, Linda Hinners, Merit Laine, Lena Munther, Magnus Olausson, Martin Olin, Maria Perers and Lidia Westerberg Olofsson

PhotographsNationalmuseum Photographic Studio/Linn Ahlgren, Bodil Beckman, Erik Cornelius, Anna Danielsson, Cecilia Heisser, Per-Åke Persson and Hans Thorwid

Picture EditorRikard Nordström

Photo Credits© Samlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (Fig. 5, p. 15)© Museum Bredius The Hague (Fig. 6, p. 16)© The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo/Jacques Lathion (Fig. 2, p. 23)© Kalmar läns museum, Kalmar/Rolf Lind (Fig. 3, p. 27)

Graphic DesignBIGG

LayoutAgneta Bervokk

Translation and Language EditingGabriella Berggren, Erika Milburn and Martin Naylor

PublishingJanna Herder (Editor) and Ingrid Lindell (Publications Manager)

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum is published annually and contains articles on the history and theory of art relating to the collections of the Nationalmuseum.

NationalmuseumBox 16176SE–103 24 Stockholm, Swedenwww.nationalmuseum.se© Nationalmuseum, the authors and the owners of the reproduced works

ISSN 2001-9238

45 Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 22, 2015

acquisitions/gustaf banér and christina sture’s drinking cup

In 2015 the Nationalmuseum acquired a large drinking cup made from spruce root, with two tall handles joined at the top and crowned with rich fretwork decoration (Fig. 1). On account of this decoration, vessels of this type are known as kronkåsor, literally “crown cups”.

The kronkåsa is a characteristic display piece of Renaissance Sweden. Providing a festive highlight on the dinner table, these magnificent drinking cups were probably used on special occasions such as baptisms, weddings and funerals, when it was consi-dered important to accentuate the history and significance of the family. They were preserved from generation to generation, as relics and evidence of a long family his-tory. That great care was taken of these re-latively fragile vessels, and that they were used time and again, is made clear by in-scriptions that testify to their being reno-vated.1

The red colour is typical of the period, predominating from the end of the 15th to the beginning of the 17th century. Woo-den vessels of various sizes, such as jugs, tankards, beakers, bowls and drinking cups, were coloured entirely red, which

Gustaf Banér and Christina Sture’s Drinking Cup from 1589

Micael ErnstellCurator, Applied Art and Design

Fig. 1 Kronkåsa (festive drinking cup), Sweden, 1589.

Carved wood, painted, H. 71 cm. Purchase: Sara and Johan Emil Graumann Fund.

Nationalmuseum, NMK 6/2015.

46Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 22, 2015

the making of new cups of this kind. Two of the oldest surviving examples, dated to around 1540, belonged to this family, one of them to Nils Pedersson Bielke (1502–1550), a senior court official, and Anna Hogenskild (1513–1590), who were mar-ried in 1537.3

Anna Hogenskild is an important link in the history of these festive drinking ves-sels. Her mother, Anna Hansdotter Tott (1478–1549), owned the family estate of Nynäs in Lemo parish, which she oversaw for 50 years. Nynäs, one of the more sig-nificant estates of the period, was in the eastern part of the Swedish realm (which at that time also included modern-day


its distinctly Gothic character presumably reflecting a concern to maintain tradi-tions. Writing in 1964, Sven T. Kjellberg, curator at Kulturen in Lund, identified late medieval winged altarpieces imported to Swedish churches from northern Eu-rope as a likely source of inspiration. The openwork decoration of the altarpieces, with their arches, pinnacles and tracery, could have prompted the highly ornate crowns of these drinking cups.

Some twenty kronkåsor have been pre-served, most of which belonged to a small circle with close ties of kinship. The majo-rity of them date from the 16th century, when the Bielke family played a key role in

could then be accented with other colours. The kronkåsa now acquired by the Natio-nalmuseum, however, is red with no supp-lementary colours. The body is decorated with the conjoined shields of the Banérs and the Stures – two of Sweden’s oldest and most important noble families. Also inscri-bed on it are the letters “GB” and “CS”, and the year “1589”. The decoration appears on both sides (Fig. 2).

It was in the 16th century that the wood carver’s art experienced its real break- through in Sweden, and that the names of skilled carvers first appeared in written sources.2 The newly acquired cup has a so-mewhat archaic shape for one dated 1589,

Fig. 2 Kronkåsa (festive drinking cup), Sweden, 1589. Carved wood, painted, H. 71 cm. Nationalmuseum, NMK 6/2015 (detail).

Fig. 3 Olaus Magnus (1490–1557), Carta Marina, 1539 (detail).



woodcut illustrations of them (Figs. 5–6). In one, we see a group of aristocratic gent-lemen seated at a table, each drinking from a cup of this kind. The vessels described and depicted are probably ones that Olaus Magnus saw with his own eyes, but they differ in various details from the cups now preserved, all of which were made after he had left Sweden in 1524, at the start of the Reformation.

drinking cups.5 Her daughter Anna Hogen-skild inherited Nynäs from her the same year. Up to the time of her death in 1590, she in turn had several cups made, giving them to close relatives.

In his work Historia de gentibus septentrio-nalibus (History of the Northern Peoples), published in Rome in 1555, Olaus Magnus (1490–1557) writes that kronkåsor come from Finland,6 providing his text with two

Finland), in an area north of Åbo (Tur-ku) known in the 16th century as “Vakka Finland”, vakka being a reference to the wooden vessels for which the region was famous. The very first map of Scandinavia – the Catholic priest Olaus Magnus’s Carta Marina from 1539 – includes a depiction of a kronkåsa in precisely this area (Figs. 3–4). The inventory of Anna Hansdotter Tott’s estate, from 1549, records five unpainted

Fig. 4 Olaus Magnus (1490–1557), Carta Marina, 1539.


kåsor were considered antiquities of great importance to the realm, and something that set it apart from other nations.Anna Hogenskild’s son Baron Hogenskild Bielke (1538–1605), a Councillor of the Realm, helped to keep the tradition of the-se wooden drinking cups alive. The Nordic Museum in Stockholm has in its collections a cup belonging to him and his wife Anna Sture. Around 1590, Bielke ordered kron-kåsor from his bailiff on the Nynäs estate, and at intervals a total of 46 red-painted cups were delivered.9 It was Hogenskild Bielke who, in 1589, gave the cup now ac-quired by the Nationalmuseum to his re-latives, Gustaf Banér (1547–1600), Coun-cillor of the Realm, and Christina Sture (1559–1619). The couple married in 1581 and had 14 children. As well as being rela-

the Elder (1630–1702) wrote his Atlantica in 1677, in which he “proved” that Sweden was the sunken Atlantis, the cradle of all the world’s culture and knowledge. When a National Office of Antiquities was set up in 1630 (now the Swedish National Heri-tage Board), Sweden was the first country with legislation to protect its cultural heri-tage. It was enacted primarily to highlight the glorious history of what at that point was a new major power of Europe. Terms of reference were drawn up for the Office, setting out what “old monuments” – i.e. ancient remains recalling the great history of Sweden – needed to be recorded. They called for inventories to be made of rune stones, ruins, coins, books and archives, but the work undertaken also extended to clothes, weapons and drinking cups.8 Kron-


Olaus Magnus goes on:

The cups above, with their branched handles, are products of the fine craftsmanship of the Finlan-ders of the North and, as noted, are called kåsor. Nature and art work together to give them beauti-ful and decorative forms. They are, you see, made from the finest spruce roots, which are embelli- shed, hollowed out and decorated on the outside with a host of carved figures, and even adorned with artistically wrought golden mounts or other colourful ornaments. They therefore have a capti-vating beauty, and thus command a high price.7

The 17th century’s interest in Swedish

history also extended to these drinking vessels, which were considered evidence of a high culture long established in the country. In the same spirit, Olof Rudbeck

Fig. 5 Olaus Magnus (1490–1557), Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, 1555.


eastern part of the kingdom. The German Johan Beckman, in an account of his tra-vels, records a visit in 1765 to the collection of antiquities at the Royal Palace in Stock-holm. His account mentions a magnificent drinking cup of this kind – probably one of Gustav Vasa’s that had survived into the 18th century.10

During the National Romantic period towards the end of the 19th century, with its predilection for looking back in histo-ry, painted kronkåsor once again began to be made, though no longer from spruce roots. From 1885 to 1898, it was possible to buy furniture, textiles and carved woo-den objects from the firm of Svensk Konst-slöjdutställning in Stockholm, founded by the designer Selma Giöbel (1843–1925). The Swedish Society of Crafts and Design

festation of nationalism, but they also offe-red an alternative to the costly silver cups produced on the continent. Records of kronkåsor survive from several palaces and royal manors. Inventories from the store-house at Gripsholm Castle include details of numbers: in 1546, for example, there were 8 painted cups, and in 1553, 23. A note was also made of when such a vessel was broken, as in 1551, when the noble-man Per Brahe hit a farmhand over the head with a painted cup, breaking it in the process; how the farmhand fared, we are not told. Nils Pedersson Bielke was respon-sible for purchasing for Gustav Vasa’s hou-sehold. As noted, he was married to Anna Hogenskild, and it would therefore no doubt have been natural for him to order kronkåsor for the royal household from the

ted, the giver and the recipients were very close politically. After the civil war between King Sigismund and his victorious uncle, Duke Charles, Gustaf Banér was beheaded. Hogenskild Bielke survived for another five years before meeting the same fate. Clearly, within the Bielke family, drinking cups ser-ved as a token of family solidarity. Through them, the family wished both to maintain medieval drinking customs and to under-score their own long history. Knowledge about one’s origins was important, and among the Bielkes those origins were sym-bolised by a clearly defined design.

At court, too, magnificent kronkåsor occurred throughout the 16th century, although they all seem to have been com-missioned during the reign of Gustav Vasa (1523–1560). This was probably a mani-


Fig. 6 Olaus Magnus (1490–1557), Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, 1555.



(Svenska Slöjdföreningen, now Svensk Form) often turned to the firm to buy pri-zes for its regular raffles.11 In the Nordic Museum there is a festive drinking cup made by Svensk Konstslöjdutställning in the 1880s or 1890s, with painted floral decoration, pokerwork ornament and a fretwork crown12 – tangible evidence of a strong interest in history and dreams of a glorious past.

Notes:1. Sven T. Kjellberg, Ölets käril, Lund 1964, p. 139.2. Ibid., p. 133.3. Nils Cleve, “Till Bielkekåsornas genealogi”, in Fataburen, Stockholm 1965, p. 15.4. Kjellberg 1964, p. 133.5. Cleve 1965, p. 17.6. Kjellberg 1964, p. 115.7. Ibid., p. 116.8. Ibid., p. 138.9. Cleve 1965, p. 26.10. Ibid., p. 36.11. Gunilla Frick, “Svenska Slöjdföreningen och Handarbetets vänner”, in Signums svenska konsthistoria 1845–1890, Kristianstad 2000, p. 537.12. The Nordic Museum, Stockholm, inv. no. NM 254304.

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