Material Culture

This hunting gun of unusual richness and superb workmanship incorporates in its decoration the initials and the coat of arms of Philippe de Croy (1526–1595), a Franco-Flemish nobleman and Spanish grandee. Figures and scenes carved in ivory represent more than a dozen Greek gods and a series of detailed vignettes with episodes from the story of the mythological hero Perseus.

Wheellock Gun of Philippe de Croy, Prince of Chimay (1526–1595)

Antwerp, Belgium - 1551–1556

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 🏺

White Netsuke in the form of a wild boar among grass

Wild boar Netsuke

Japan - 1860/1890

Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford 🏺

The figure is wearing ear ornaments and has symmetrical serpents encircling the eyes, terminating on the body. Below is a pentangular Venus element.

Marajo Janus-Figure Burial Urn

Brazil,

Marjo Island, c. AD 400 - 1350 🏺

A large reddish clay pot with a face (eyes, nose and mouth) engraved on the side.

Human Face Bowl

Mexico, 200–500 AD

Terra cotta, 9 1/4 x 11 inches

Wichita Art Museum 🏺

The figure is wearing ear ornaments and has symmetrical serpents encircling the eyes, terminating on the body. Below is a pentangular Venus element.

Marajo Janus-Figure Burial Urn

Brazil,

Marjo Island, c. AD 400 - 1350 🏺

The metal "Glastonbury Bowl" was made from two sections riveted together and repaired several times over its life. The bottom half has been dated as having been constructed in the Iron Age. The upper half was probably added in the 1st century from one sheet of metal, which may have been previously used for another purpose, and the two-halves riveted together.

Glastonbury Lake Village Bowl

Hammered bronze - Iron Age

Glastonbury Lake, UK 🏺

An iron-bladed dagger from the tomb of the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun (reigned c. 1334–1325 BC). As the blade composition and homogeneity closely correlate with meteorite composition and homogeneity, the material for the blade is determined to have originated by way of a meteoritic landing.

Tutankhamun's meteoric iron dagger

~ 1350 B.C.

Egyptian Museum, Cairo 🏺

White surf crashes against the rocks overhead and the sea churns at the Naruto whirlpools. As the tides change, the water passing through Naruto Strait, a channel connecting the Inland Sea and the Pacific Ocean, creates whirlpools that can reach a diameter of 20 meters. In Hiroshige’s design, the viewer is nearly submerged in one such vortex as the sea roils in shades of blue. In the distance, the current quiets and plovers fly overhead. Today, the whirlpools remain a natural attraction, typically appearing twice a day with the changing tides. The former Awa Province now belongs to modern Tokushima Prefecture.

Utagawa Hiroshige,

Naruto Whirlpools, from Famous Places in the Sixty-Odd Provinces,

🖌️ Color woodblock print, 1855

Gift of the Rodbell Family Collection

A large reddish clay pot with a face (eyes, nose and mouth) engraved on the side.

Human Face Bowl

Mexico, 200–500 AD

Terra cotta, 9 1/4 x 11 inches

Wichita Art Museum 🏺

The metal "Glastonbury Bowl" was made from two sections riveted together and repaired several times over its life. The bottom half has been dated as having been constructed in the Iron Age. The upper half was probably added in the 1st century from one sheet of metal, which may have been previously used for another purpose, and the two-halves riveted together.

Glastonbury Lake Village Bowl

Hammered bronze - Iron Age

Glastonbury Lake, UK 🏺

A black and white jug with zigzag patterns. The vessel feels strangely modern.

Anasazi (ancestral Pueblo) Jug

Arizona (United States), 12th–18th century

Metropolitan Museum of Arts

Produced during the late Yayoi period, the distinctive clapperless Japanese bronze bells known as dōtaku are thought to derive from earlier, smaller Korean examples that adorned horses and other domesticated animals. Dōtaku were buried, singly, in pairs, and in large groups—occasionally with bronze mirrors and weapons—in isolated locations, often on hilltops, perhaps to ensure a community’s agricultural fertility. Later dōtaku had relatively thin walls and would not have resonated, so it assumed their purpose was primarily ritual. Source : https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/44831

Dōtaku (Bronze Bell)

Japan, Yayoi Period,

1st–2nd century AD

Metropolitan Museum of Art 🏺

The masks are finely carved to convey admired feminine features: an elaborate coiffure, a smooth, broad forehead, narrowly slit eyes, a small, composed mouth, and a sensuously ringed neck. This composition of forms and symmetry creates a serene facial expression that implies self-control. The presence of a beard, a symbol synonymous with the wisdom men achieve with age and experience, may suggest that, through Sande, women attain knowledge equal to men. Directly below the curve of the beard are two slots through which the performer can see.

Helmet Mask

19th-20th century,

Sierra Leone, Moyamba region
Mende or Sherbro peoples

Wood, metal.

Metropolitan Museum of Arts 🏺

The gun has been modified to the glory of France, with a cock holding a globe it it claws at the top, and four panel at the base, including one showing “France casting the rays of science unto Africa”…

Baba Merzoug (“La Consulaire”)

A 23-foot long muzzle-loading gun, ordered by Hasan Pasha, son of Barbarossa, for the completion of the fortifications of Algiers.

Looted by the French during the Invasion of Algiers in 1830, it was taken as a trophy to Brest, where it is still displayed 🏺

Ornamented bronze mirror, 25,7 cm diameter

Sankakubuchi shinjū - Sacred bronze mirror

Koshinohara (Shiga préfecture)
- Kofun period

National Museum of Tokyo 🏺

The throne is very plain and simple and entirely free of ornamentation. Six steps lead up to the seat, which is on a podium. The seat itself consists of four marble plates held together with bronze clamps.

Throne of Charlemagne

Palatine Chapel of Aachen, Germany

790s A.D.

The mask is depicted as a shoulder supported headdress that the performer would have carried over his head. The mask would have been decorated with European upholstery tacks and raffia that would have completely covered and concealed the performer in costume. The holes in the bottom legs of the headdress would have supported a circular bamboo loop that the raffia and costume was attached to. Source : https://www.valpo.edu/brauer-museum-of-art/african-artifacts/lawrence-p-kolton-collection/nimba-dmba-ceremonial-headdress/

Nimba (D’mba) ceremonial headdress from Baga people, Guinea Bissau.

Brauer Museum of Art 🏺

Funerary mask made with over 346 green jade stone fragments, the eyes are made with shell, nacre and the pupils with obsidian stone.

Funerary jade mask of Pakal the Great, king of Palenque (603 – 683)

Green jade stone, shell, nacre and obsidian stone

National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City 🏺

A black and white jug with zigzag patterns. The vessel feels strangely modern.

Anasazi (ancestral Pueblo) Jug

Arizona (United States), 12th–18th century

Metropolitan Museum of Arts

Massive bronze vessel decorated with a series of reliefs, including a frieze depicting hoplites, winged gorgons on the handles, etc.

Le Cratère de Vix 🏺

Dating to the 6th century BCE, and discovered in 1953 at the burial site of a Celtic princess in Vix, France.

It’s the largest Greek vessel ever discovered : 1.6 meters tall and weighing 206 kilograms. It was likely crafted for ceremonial and prestige purposes only.

A napoleonic era breast armor with a huge hole on the right side made by a cannonball

Rifleman Fauveau’s breastplate

French Army Museum - Paris

François Antoine Fauveau was born on January 18th 1792 and died at the battle of Waterloo on 18th June 1815, at the age of 23.

A decorative sheath dress made of beads worn in ancient Egypt, reassembled from approximately seven thousand beads found in an undisturbed burial of a female contemporary of King Khufu.

Egyptian Beadnet dress

Old Kingdom, Dynasty 6, 2323–2150 BCE

Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Ses main text

Top : the Bison Licking Insect Bite, a prehistoric carving from the Upper Paleolithic, found at Abri de la Madeleine near Tursac in Dordogne, France (Magdalenian culture)

Bottom : an actual European bison licking insect bite

Marble figurine depicting a standing human figure with folded arms, a long neck and a stylised face with prominent nose.

Cycladic female figure

Greece, ca. 2500-2400 BCE (Early Cycladic III)

The Walter Arts Museum, Baltimore, USA

A blue figurine of an hippopotamus with black lines depicting floral patterns on its body

William the blue faience hippopotamus

Egyptian Middle Kingdom, c. 1961 BC – c. 1878 BC

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

🦋 Hello Bluesky 🏺