Auricular style

The auricular style or lobate style (Dutch: Kwabstijl, German:Ohrmuschelstil) is a style of ornamental decoration, mainly found in Northern Europe in the first half of the 17th century, bridging Northern Mannerism and the Baroque. The style was especially important and effective in silversmithing, but was also used in minor architectural ornamentation such as door and window reveals, picture frames, and a wide variety of the decorative arts. It uses softly flowing abstract shapes in relief, sometimes asymmetrical, whose resemblance to the side view of the human ear gives it its name, or at least its "undulating, slithery and boneless forms occasionally carry a suggestion of the inside of an ear or a conch shell". It is often associated with stylized marine animal forms, or ambiguous masks and shapes that might be such, which seem to emerge from the rippling, fluid background, as if the silver remained in its molten state.

In some other European languages the style is covered by the local equivalent of the term cartilage baroque, so called because the forms may resemble cartilage (e.g. Knorpelbarock in German, bruskbarokk in Norwegian, bruskbarok in Danish). But these terms may be rather widely and vaguely applied to a bewildering range of styles of Northern Mannerist and Baroque ornament. In Dutch a "dolphin and mollusk" style is mentioned.

Although precedents have been traced in the graphic designs of Italian Mannerist artists such as Giulio Romano and Enea Vico, the auricular style can first be found in 1598 in the important ornament book of Northern Mannerism, Architectura: Von Außtheilung, Symmetria und Proportion der Fünff Seulen ..., by Wendel Dietterlin of Stuttgart, in the second edition of 1598. It can be found in the designs of Hans Vredeman de Vries in the Netherlands, and was used most effectively in the hands of the Utrecht silversmiths Paul and Adam van Vianen, and Paul's pupil Johannes Lutma, who settled in Amsterdam. Another Dutch silversmith who worked in the auricular style was Thomas Bogaert. At mid-century, designs for plate by M. Mosyn were published in Amsterdam. Christian van Vianen, a son of Adam, worked in England at the courts of Charles I and Charles II, and took the style there. A bratina or Russian toasting-cup in the Walters Art Museum was made in Russia in 1650-70 in an auricular style that was presumably copied from pieces brought in by Dutch traders, perhaps as gifts to ease trade deals.

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