What city was  the Aspremont-Lynden set made?
Apart from pieces purely in metal, a number are centred on either hardstone carvings or organic objects such as horns, seashells, ostrich eggshells, and exotic plant seeds.  These "curiosities" are typical of the taste of the Renaissance "age of discovery" and show the schatzkammer and the cabinet of curiosities overlapping.  A different form of novelty is represented by a table-ornament of a silver-gilt foot-high figure of a huntsman with a dog and brandishing a spear.  There is a clockwork mechanism in his base which propels him along the table, and his head lifts off to show a cup, and he would have been used in drinking games. There are separate figures of a boar and stags for him to pursue, though not making a set; these can also function as cups.One of the most important objects in the collection is the Ghisi Shield, a parade shield never intended for use in battle, made by Giorgio Ghisi, who was both a goldsmith and an important printmaker.  It is signed and dated 1554. With a sword hilt, dated 1570 and now in at the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest, this is the only surviving damascened metalwork by Ghisi. The shield is made of iron hammered in relief, then damascened with gold and partly plated with silver. It has an intricate design with a scene of battling horseman in the centre, within a frame, around which are four further frames containing allegorical female figures, the frames themselves incorporating minute and crowded subjects on a much smaller scale from the Iliad and ancient mythology, inlaid in gold.Other major pieces are sets of a ewer and basin, basin in this context meaning a large dish or salver, which when used were carried round by pairs of servants for guests to wash their hands without leaving the table.  However the examples in the collection were probably hardly ever used for this, but were intended purely for display on sideboards; typically the basins are rather shallow for actual use.  These were perhaps the grandest type of plate, with large surfaces where Mannerist inventiveness could run riot in the decoration.  They were already expensive because of the weight of the precious metal, to which a huge amount of time by highly skilled silversmiths was added. The Aspremont-Lynden set in the bequest is documented in that family back to 1610, some 65 years after it was made in Antwerp, and weighs a little less than five kilos.
Antwerp