Description: A flaring circular bowl with hanging grape clusters above a spiral twist stem and pedestal foot. Weight in troy ounces is 17.86Provenance as written by the consignor. My mother immigrated to the States in 1939 as a “celebrity” hostess at the Swedish Pavilion of the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, N.Y. I say celebrity because those jobs were very sought after and given to those with connections in Stockholm and she was from a very aristocratic and socially connected family. Her mother was Gravinna (Countess) Marta Wrangel married to Greve (Count) Fredrick vonPlaten. She (Wrangel) was born and grew up in Skocloster Palace (town Waxio) outside Stockholm. Both these families were prominent aristocrats albeit as with most such families being taxed out of their homes and large estates by an increasingly aggressive taxing by the nascent socialist government. He (vonPlaten) was an accountant and son of the Greve Magnus vonPlaten a high ranking army officer who found himself out of a career when the Swedish Government declared neutrality in the last quarter of the 19th Century. Increasingly destitute but proud they gave up their estates and moved to apartments in Stockholm and tried to maintain social standing, avoided “work” which they were not trained for, many survive to this day having evolved into folks of normal standing and occupation. My mother Gravinna (Countess) Marta Amalie Ulrika vonPlaten was born in Stockholm in 1916 the youngest of four daughters and so ended the line. “Trapped” in New York during WWII, she met my father Nils Kristian Gustaf Tholand, KVO a very successful engineer born in Gothenberg, Sweden in 1918, and who in 1939 and living well in Manhattan, was placed in charge of setting up the Swedish Pavilion (engineering exhibition) where the young hostess (17 years younger) caught his eye. I could tell you his story, which in many ways is the quintessential “American Dream” success story, but none of that has to do with the provenance of the Jensen silver. Except! that his father, Gustaj Borjesson (Danish) and a merchant in Copenhagen knew George Jensen intimately. That’s where the story of the 1915 Jensen Boxed set having been made by Jensen himself comes from, although there is no written or photographic evidence to support that. That boxed set my father inherited and would have brought to New York sometime in the 1940s. So, my parents met, married, and lived well in New York from 1943 for many years leading up to WWII. They lived at 64 East Sutton Place if you know the East River area. They had the whole floor of the building and sold the flat to Greta Garbo who by then 1945 had retired from acting and lived reclusively there until her death in the 1980s I believe. They traveled to Copenhagen after they married where they bought the Jensen Acorn Silver and Jensen procured cabinetry and had it shipped to New York in the mid 1940s. They entertained lavishly, mostly Swedish celebrities like opera singer Jussi Bjorling, diplomats working in the Swedish Legation (Sweden did not have an embassy in Washington, D.C. until after the war), and notable Political persons like Dag Hammersjold, then the head of the United Nations. They sold their second apartment at 35 Park Avenue, and moved to the Northern Va. farm Piedmont near Middleburg, where they lived until my father died in 1971. My mother lived in Washington, Va. until her death in1995 at the age of 80. She was beloved, eschewed the nobility thing, entertained graciously which her upbringing made easy. When she died Tant (Aunt in Swedish to us kids) Lia vonSydov, the daughter of the King of Estonia, and my mother’s best friend, said to the group gathered for her memorial, “Marta taught us how to live, and now has taught us how to die”. A smoker, she died of a painful sarcoma cancer, but never complained. Not even a whimper.

History: Georg Arthur Jensen (31 August 1866 in Rådvad – 2 October 1935 in Copenhagen) was a Danish silversmith.br>Born in 1866, Jensen was the son of a knife grinder in the town of Raadvad just to the north of Copenhagen. Jensen began his training in goldsmithing at the age of 14 in Copenhagen. His apprenticeship with the firm Guldsmed Andersen, ended in 1884, and this freed young Georg to follow his artistic interests. From childhood, Jensen had longed to be a sculptor and he now pursued this course of study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. He graduated in 1892 and began exhibiting his work. Although his clay sculpture was well received, making a living as a fine artist proved difficult and he turned his hand to the applied arts. First as a modeller at the Bing & Grøndahl porcelain factory and, beginning in 1898, with a small pottery workshop he founded in partnership with Christian Petersen. Again the work was well received, but sales were not strong enough to support Jensen, by this point a widower, and his two small sons. In 1901, he abandoned ceramics and began again as a silversmith and designer with the master, Mogens Ballin.[1] This led Jensen to make a landmark decision, when in 1904, he risked what small capital he had and opened his own little silversmithy at 36 Bredgade in Copenhagen. Jensen's training in metalsmithing along with his education in the fine arts allowed him to combine the two disciplines and revive the tradition of the artist craftsman. Soon, the beauty and quality of his Art Nouveau creations caught the eye of the public and his success was assured. The Copenhagen quarters were greatly expanded and before the end of the 1920s, Jensen had opened retail in Berlin (1909), London (1921), and New York (1924).During his lifetime, Jensen's work was collected by museums including the Danish Museum for Decorative Art and the Museum Folkwang.[1] In 2005 the Bard Graduate Center in New York presented an exhibition entitled, Georg Jensen Jewelry.

Provenance: N/A

Dimensions: Weight (Pounds & Ounces) = 1.225 | Height(in) = 7.5 | Width(in) = 7.25 | Depth(in) = 7.25

Size of Artwork(in): 7.5 x 7.25"

Artist Name: Georg Jensen

Medium: Silver

Circa: 1933 -44

Very good.