Posted 10 years ago
Streganonna
(13 items)
A friend has asked me to see if someone knows what the country of origin this cast iron (or cast metal of some kind) figure of a boar is. It's fastened to the stand with museum glue so I couldn't move it for other pictures. The first 2 were taken with natural light and the second 2 were with flash.
He says it's hollow and appeared to be cast in several pieces and then put together. Length is approximately 12" ± and height is approximately 10" ±.
China, India?
One similar here: Chinese.
http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/17028156_chinese-bronze-boar
At the Met there is another described as "Standing boar, Eastern Javanese period, ca. 14th century, Indonesia (Java), Bronze "
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/?period=07®ion=sse
This link is better:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1987.142.259
During the rule of the Eastern Javanese kingdom of Majapahit (fourteenth through early sixteenth century), there developed a fondness for a category of object apparently derived from the Western piggy bank. Many terracotta pigs, naturalistic and usually well sculpted, with slots cut at the top so that they could serve as coin boxes, have been recovered from around Trowulan, the Majapahit capital. Even though swine must have played an important role in the domestic economy, the reasons for the great popularity of this animal shape for coin boxes in Eastern Java are unclear. It has been suggested that the shape is a well-suited allusion to financial success as well as culinary delights, since pork and especially suckling pigs are considered a great delicacy. A few of these terracotta pigs are unslotted, and their function, like that of this rare example in bronze, remains unknown.
The fierce look of this creature and his projecting tusks suggest he is a wild boar who is sufficiently domesticated to wear a chain with a bell, a common feature of most of the Eastern Javanese terracotta piggy banks. Hollow, this charming boar was cast in two sections—front half and back half.