Plate 9: Vase or Ewer with a Serpent Handle and Two Putti holding up a Garland, from Antique Vases (‘Vasa a Polydoro Caravagino’) 1605

Editor: Here we have Aegidius Sadeler II’s "Plate 9: Vase or Ewer with a Serpent Handle and Two Putti holding up a Garland," from 1605. The engraving depicts an elaborately decorated vase—it almost feels like something you’d find in a fever dream of ancient Rome. What stands out to you? Curator: Oh, that serpent, absolutely! It slithers around the vase like a bad idea you just can't shake. But it’s beautiful, isn't it? The whole thing has a sense of drama; the putti straining to hold the garland… Are they proud, or exhausted, I wonder? And those ornamental details! So abundant! Sadeler, like many artists of his time, was deeply inspired by antiquity, trying to recapture its grandeur, its stories. Editor: It definitely has that sense of striving for something. I didn't realize it was trying to replicate a classical design, that gives it another layer of meaning. Curator: Absolutely! These weren't just pretty vases, you know? They were vessels for meaning, for status, for impressing the neighbors. How does the intense ornamentation make you feel? Almost claustrophobic, maybe? Editor: A little, yes! Like, where does one even begin to look? There's so much going on! It's interesting how something meant to display status could also feel kind of overwhelming. Curator: Perhaps that was the point, to overwhelm! To declare, "Look how much I have, how much I know!" It's visual rhetoric at its finest. What have you discovered about how ornament functions in art and design? Editor: I suppose I always thought of ornament as…well, *just* decoration. But this makes me realize it can be a form of storytelling, a way of communicating ideas. Curator: Precisely! These vases aren’t merely functional objects. They’re conversations with the past, boasting matches of wealth and taste and, dare I say, power. It’s not *just* decoration; it is intention made visual.