South African Design: Past & Present

Timed Online Auction, 13 June - 9 July 2025

Cape Interiors: Furniture, Metalware, Silver & Glass
About the Session

This sale traces the heritage of South African design across centuries of creative expression highlighting diverse design objects through two sessions. Uniting the sessions is a celebration of the versatility of materials - metal, wood, glass, clay, fibre - and how artists and artisans have transformed them over time into works of wonder, rich in both tradition and innovation.

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  • Cape silver sugar bowl, Martinus Lourens Smith, 19th century
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Lot Estimate
ZAR 60 000 - 80 000
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Starting at ZAR 60 000
Location
Cape Town
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About this Item

Marthinus Lourens Smith
Cape Colony
Cape silver sugar bowl, Martinus Lourens Smith, 19th century urn-shaped with beaded borders, the sides applied with a pair of rope-twist handles, on a spreading circular foot and square base, the semi-domed cover with bud and leaf finial, 365g, 17cm high

Notes

Marthinus Lourens Smith, born in 1722 in Aalborg, Denmark, arrived at the Cape on 27 October 1757. Over the course of his life, he married four times: first to Engela van den Burg in 1763, then to Maria Elizabeth Erasmus in 1765, followed by Elizabeth Catharina de Bruyn in 1784, and finally to Anna Catharina Volschenk in 1788. All ten of his children were born from his second marriage to Maria Elizabeth Erasmus. Smith was active as a silversmith.

cf. Stephen Welz (1976) Cape silver and silversmiths, Cape Town, AA Balkema, Pages 98-101, where comparative examples are discussed and illustrated.

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