Still Life with Silver Brandy Bowl, Wine Glass, Herring, and Bread

In the middle of this little breakfast table stands a silver bowl that a Dutch household would normally bring out for a party. It is a brandewijnkom, a brandy bowl, shallow and lobed like a flower, with a flat pierced handle on each side. Bowls like this were filled with brandy sweetened with sugar and raisins, and passed from guest to guest, each taking a spoonful. The best-known occasion was the gathering of women to welcome a newborn child, though the bowl came out at other celebrations too.

Here it holds a brown liquid and sits on the folded white cloth among ordinary food, a piece of bread with its crust split open, a cracked walnut, a fish on a pewter plate. Behind it rises a big green roemer half full of pale wine. Claesz painted the whole panel in his narrow range of greys and browns, and the silver catches the same dull daylight as the pewter.

He put his monogram and the year 1642 on the wall to the left of the glass. The Museum of Fine Arts has a second Claesz panel of the same year, with a stoneware jug where this one has the silver bowl.