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| Anonymous (Spain, Madinat-al-Zahira) Casket ca. 961-965 ivory and silver Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| 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.
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| Anonymous (England, St. Albans) Box with Centaurs ca. 1130 walrus ivory Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Anonymous (Sri Lanka) Cabinet ca. 1650-75 wood, ivory veneer, silver Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Anonymous (India) Work-box mid-19th century wood, ivory veneer, brass Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Melchior Baumgartner (Germany, Augsburg) Table Cabinet ca. 1650 ivory veneer, gilded copper Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Pietro Piffetti (Italy, Turin) Casket on stand ca. 1745 wood, ivory, gilt bronze, mother-of-pearl Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Anonymous (England) Glove-stretcher late-19th ccentury ivory Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Joachim Henne Portrait-bust of Queen Sophie-Amalie of Denmark ca. 1670-80 ivory Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Anonymous (Italy, Naples or Sicily) Immaculate Conception ca. 1700-1720 ivory Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Anonymous (Germany) Knife-handle as grotesque horned head ca. 1680-1720 ivory Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Anonymous (France) Rosary bead ca. 1520-30 ivory Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Anonymous (Spain, Cuenca) Casket-plaque with angel, birds, gazelles mid-11th century ivory Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Anonymous (Byzantium) Casket-plaque with drunken Herakles supported by Priapus second half of 10th century ivory Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| 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.