Oirschot

A new font consisting of a glass basin on three bronze figures raised on an octagonal body was commissioned for this church in 2004 is described and illustrated in Hans van Erd [https://www.hansvaneerd.nl/werk/opdrachtendetail/doopvont.html] [accessed 14 January 2022]. According to the entry for this church in Rijksmonumenten [https://rijksmonumenten.nl/monument/31282/sint-petruskerk/oirschot/] [accessed 14 January 2022] the four black marble lions that support the large disused baptismal font here were originally the support of a 1552 tomb by Ricalt Y van Merode [cf. infra]; the basin itself, of red marble, is from 1834. Bieke van der mark's Four north German bronze lions from Bordesholm, in The Burlington Magazine, CLVII, Nov. 2015: 749 [201511.40375.pdf] [accessed 14 January 2022] deals chiefly with the four lions of the former baptismal font at Bordesholm, as the title indicates, but mentions also the old font at Oirschot as one of those partially melted for the metal. In a communication to Pol Herman the author Bieke van der mark wrote: " I speculate in my article that the font of Bordesholm, along with the bronze church vessels, was taken from the church and melted down for the casting of armor for the Duke of Gottorf. The latter is actually registered; it took 24 horses to pull the carts with the bronze from the church to the gun foundry, so that sounds a heavy load ! In other words, there must have been a baptismal font on the carts. In any case, the lions with the coats of arms were spared, I suspect out of respect for the Pogwisches, a well-known and important family of knights (because of their involvment in the foundation history of the church). Many bronze fonts have been melted down over the centuries, for example if they went out of taste or if one wanted to sell the bronze or if local authorities wanted to use the metal for producing artillery weapons. It wouldn't surprise me if this also happened to an older baptismal font in Oirschot and that the lions, just like in Bordesholm, were spared out of respect for the family (because of the coats of arms)."