Another popular method of assessing suitors’ suitability is to pass them through a sieve — the acceptable candidate remains in the sieve. Again, the motif predates the albums
Woman sieves fools/men
woman sieves fools from Wickram, Kurtzweil (Strasbourg 1539, etc.)Speckstein biscuit-mould, this side dated 1541. Banderoles: de frigen naren mosen durch rifen fallen [‘free’ fools must fall through the sieve] — ‘free’ here could mean ‘single/unmarried’ or ‘undisciplined/uncultivated’. Wiesbaden Museum — scanned friom Arens 1971.from the album of Daniel von Redern, c.1590. Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket, Signatur Ir 2 aStuttgart, WLB, Frommann Collection, cod. hist. fol. 908-3, f.24v.Monogrammist BKGF 1590. London, British Museum, 1876,0510.553enamel-painted glass bottle dated 1595; cf bottle of same date sold Sothebys, November 21 2006detail of plate in the print-book, Philotheca Corneliana (Frankfurt 1619)
Men sieve women
orphaned leaf, 1590s. Bayerisches NationalMuseum, KB576detail from the de Brys’ print-book, Emblemata Saecularia (1596, 1611)Hainhofer gameboard square, from the boards produced in Augsburg c.1615-1625; this image from a board in a Dutch private collection, as published in Proverbium 19 (2002). p.188
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