Gothic Ivories Project | Box (boîte) (End, right)

Lid
Register 1: male dancer; female dancer; male dancer.
Register 2: male dancer; male musician with drum (?) and pipe; dancing jester.
Body, front
Running dog; hunter with a spear; trees.
End, right
Dog pursuing a boar; trees.
Body, back
Running dog; hunter with a spear; hunter blowing into a horn; tree; sun.
End, left
Running dogs; trees.
Crosshatched background; foliated borders. Chequered pattern on the bottom.

Attribution
Unknown

Polychromy - Gilding
Extensive gilding and polychromy: gold (borders; trees; musical instruments; ground; hair, etc.), green (trees; ground; foliated decoration), red (clothes; borders), brown (hair).

Reverse
Carved on all sides.
Label on the bottom: 'Bone./North Ital. or/French-XV cent/Mrs Drey 1963/$5,000'.

Comments
The interior of the box has been covered in gold leaf.

Provenance
Collection of Frédéric Engel-Gros, Château de Ripaille, Mulhouse (Alsace)(d. 1918). Purchased by Werner Abegg from Paul Drey Gallery, New York, in 1963; donated to the Museum by Werner Abegg in 1969.

Bibliography
P. Ganz, L'oeuvre d'un amateur d'art: la collection de monsieur F. Engel-Gros (Geneva, 1925), I, pp. 260, 432 (no. 13).
T. Müller, 'Ein spätgotisches Moriskenfries aus dem Piemont', in Artes minors-Dank an Werner Abegg, ed. by M. Stettler and M. Lemberg (Bern, 1973), p. 206.
P. Vandenbroek, Vol d'âmes. Traditions de transe afro-européennes (Ghent, 1997), p. 222.

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