Detail of Emperor Leopold I’s amber throne, ca. 1667

The ivory and amber carver Christoph Maucher (1642–1707), who came from Schwäbisch Gmünd, relocated to Danzig in 1670. He obtained the permission of the city council to work as a sculptor from 1684, and a year later also to make works in amber, despite protests from the guild of amber turners in Danzig. The detail pictured above is a depiction of Alexander the Great, and was originally part of the amber throne presented to Emperor Leopold I (1640–1705) on the twentieth anniversary of his accession in 1678.

Alexander the Great, detail of Emperor Leopold I’s amber throne, amber carving, ca. 1667, artist: Christoph Maucher, design: Nikolaus Turow; source: © KHM-Museumsverband, https://www.khm.at/de/object/89569/, Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.de.