Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from February, 2012

Ivory Elephants/Elephant Ivories

 Yes!  My love for self-refentiality is finally satisfied with some elephants made from elephant ivory!  I encountered both while slogging through the 1504/1534/1634 inventories of the treasury of Saint-Denis (the 1504 inventory is reproduced in the 1534 document which is then reproduced in the 1634 list, which remarks on any changes to the objects over the previous hundred years).  Both are listed as game pieces, probably chess pieces, that were associated with Charlemagne - although that association can't be accurate.  The more elaborate object, the one on the left, is unlikely to have been a game piece since its quite large.  And both post-date Charlemagne, the one on the right is 9th or 10th century and the other is from the 11thC.  It seems to be Italian, while the first is Indian, but also Islamic; an inscription on it identifies it as the work of one Yusuf al Bahili.  You have to wonder by what path it came to be at Saint-Denis: maybe through Spain as an intermediary?