Feeling beastly in the Netherlands and Germany
The so-called auricular style – all organic fluid lines and asymmetrical shapes populated by marine invertebrates and reptiles – can first be found in the 1598 ornament book of Northern Mannerism, Architectura…, by Wendel Dietterlin of Stuttgart.
However, it reached its apogee at the Utrecht workshop of the greatest silversmiths of the Dutch G…