


British Museum:
Aldegrever's work shows more than any other artist since Schongauer the close association that persisted between the engravers' and goldsmiths' professions. About one hundred of his engravings are designs for ornament, of which his designs for goldsmiths' work fall into the period 1528-39. He produced seventeen designs for sheaths of swords, daggers or domestic knives, most of which show the sheaths alone. [These] display large-scale designs for the scabbard and hilt; they represent his most impressive achievement in this genre and are probably the most famous ornament prints of the period. Such objects would have been extremely costly to realise and were intended for ceremonial use by the nobility or wealthy patrician families. Daggers of this type are seen buckled to the men in Aldegrever's engravings of wedding dancers of 1538 and in drawings by Urs Graf and others.