Nautilus goblet with coral

When the Green Vault was refurnished as a treasury museum, Augustus the Strong commissioned the court jeweler Köhler in 1723 to inspect the historic collection. The bizarre shape of a nautilus shell from Amsterdam and a Nuremberg goldsmith sculpture created roughly fifty years earlier, inspired Köhler to combine these to works to form an ingeniously imaginative parade cup. The dragon, the back of which consists of a large coral branch, is ridden by a masked and harnessed creature with goat legs. The dragon already served as a foot and supported a nautilus shell before it was incorporated into the vessel exhibited here. The curious vessel not only exemplifies the creativity and artistic sensibility of the court jeweler, but also throws a light on the influence that the collection of treasury art had on the so-called "Augustean Baroque".