Sunday, January 8, 2017

Old Ivory Objects

Anonymous (Spain, Madinat-al-Zahira)
Casket
ca. 961-965
ivory and silver
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous (Spain, Cordoba)
Casket
ca. 1000-1025
ivory, with later silver additions
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

CASKET  A small box or chest for jewels, letters, or other things of value, itself often of valuable material and richly ornamented.

Anonymous (England, St. Albans)
Box with Centaurs
ca. 1130
walrus ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous (Sri Lanka)
Cabinet
ca. 1650-75
wood, ivory veneer, silver
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous (India)
Work-box
mid-19th century
wood, ivory veneer, brass
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Melchior Baumgartner (Germany, Augsburg)
Table Cabinet
ca. 1650
ivory veneer, gilded copper
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Pietro Piffetti (Italy, Turin)
Casket on stand
ca. 1745
wood, ivory, gilt bronze, mother-of-pearl
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous (England)
Glove-stretcher
late-19th ccentury
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Joachim Henne
Portrait-bust of Queen Sophie-Amalie of Denmark
ca. 1670-80
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous (Italy, Naples or Sicily)
Immaculate Conception
ca. 1700-1720
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous (Germany)
Knife-handle as grotesque horned head
ca. 1680-1720
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous (France)
Rosary bead
ca. 1520-30
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous (Spain, Cuenca)
Casket-plaque with angel, birds, gazelles
mid-11th century
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous (Byzantium)
Casket-plaque with drunken Herakles supported by Priapus
second half of 10th century
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

The Walpole Cabinet
1743
wood, ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

In 1743 when he returned to England after a Grand Tour of Europe, Horace Walpole (1717-1797) commissioned the cabinet above as a fitting receptacle for his collection of medals and enamels. "It was conceived as a miniature 'Classical Temple of Worthies' supporting ivory figures of three of Walpole's artistic heroes, the architects Andrea Palladio (1518-1580) and Inigo Jones (1573-1652) and the sculptor François Duquesnoy (ca. 1594-1643) . . . The pediment top is unusual for a small-scale cabinet and was inspired by contemporary Palladian architecture.  J.F. Verskovis, a Flemish sculptor, supplied the ivory statuettes and also carved the ivory eagle heads and the adjacent festoons of fruit and flowers in padouk wood . . . The cabinet was originally displayed in Horace Walpole's house in Arlington Street, London. In the early 1760s it was moved to his country residence, Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, where it formed the centerpiece of the Tribune, a room in which some of the most precious small objects in his collection were displayed."

I am grateful to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London for the excellent reproductions.