{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O153920"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O153920/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2012FH0162/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2012FH0162/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"high","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2012FH0162","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":{"_iiif_pres":"https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O153920/manifest.json","_alt_iiif_pres":[]}},"record":{"systemNumber":"O153920","accessionNumber":"2161-1855","objectType":"Powder flask","titles":[],"summaryDescription":"This ivory powder flask is by an unknown artist made in Germany in about 1830-50. The brightly coloured ivory is carved with a hunting scene and in the centre are a couple of rabbits. Although recalling seventeenth-century powder flasks, the broad carving and stylistic features suggest that this piece dates from the early to mid-nineteenth century.\r\nPowder Flasks are portable containers of wood, horn, metal, leather or ceramic used to hold the priming powder or gunpowder for firearms. They normally terminated in a metal nozzle which also served as a powder measure, closed by a plug or spring cap, and are often highly decorated.\n\nThe production of ivories in historicizing styles in the 19th century flourished in a number of centres, including Cologne, Milan, Toulouse and Cordoba. Although not always made to deceive, unscrupulous dealers often sold them as genuine objects to their clients. There are a number of ivories in the collection that were made in an earlier style, when in fact they were produced in the nineteenth, or even the ealry twentieth century. It is not always known when such objects were manufactured as deliberate fakes, intended to deceive, and when they were instead fantasy pieces, historicizing sculptures, simply made in an earlier manner. \r\n","physicalDescription":"A hunting scene. Ivory brightly coloured. Men on horseback and rabbits, with slightly crude polychromy.","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Unknown","id":"A1848"},"association":{"text":"","id":""},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[{"text":"ivory","id":"AAT11857"}],"techniques":[{"text":"carved","id":"AAT53149"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"Carved ivory","categories":[{"text":"Accessories","id":"THES48998"},{"text":"Sport","id":"THES48893"},{"text":"Sculpture","id":"THES48896"},{"text":"Tools & Equipment","id":"THES48883"}],"styles":[],"collectionCode":{"text":"SCP","id":"THES48600"},"images":["2012FH0162"],"imageResolution":"high","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"A","id":"THES386317"},"free":"","case":"","shelf":"","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"Powder flask","id":""}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"Germany","id":"x28873"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"ca. 1830 - ca. 1850","earliest":"1825-01-01","latest":"1854-12-31"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Height","value":"11.8","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"whole","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"9.5","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"","marksAndInscriptions":[],"objectHistory":"Acquired from the Bernal collection at Christie's, London, 21 March 1855, lot 1671.\r\n\r\nProvenance\r\n\r\nRalph Bernal (1783-1854) was a renowned collector and objects from his collection are now in museums across the world, including the V&A. He was born into a Sephardic Jewish family of Spanish descent, but was baptised into the Christian religion at the age of 22. Bernal studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, and subsequently became a prominent Whig politician. He built a reputation for himself as a man of taste and culture through the collection he amassed and later in life he became the president of the British Archaeological Society. Yet the main source of income which enabled him to do this was the profits from enslaved labour.\r\n\r\nIn 1811, Bernal inherited three sugar plantations in Jamaica, where over 500 people were eventually enslaved. Almost immediately, he began collecting works of art and antiquities. After the emancipation of those enslaved in the British Caribbean in the 1830s, made possible in part by acts of their own resistance, Bernal was awarded compensation of more than £11,450 (equivalent to over £1.5 million today). This was for the loss of 564 people enslaved on Bernal’s estates who were classed by the British government as his ‘property'. They included people like Antora, and her son Edward, who in August 1834 was around five years old (The National Archives, T 71/49). Receiving the money appears to have led to an escalation of Bernal's collecting.\r\n\r\nWhen Bernal died in 1855, he was celebrated for 'the perfection of his taste, as well as the extent of his knowledge' (Christie and Manson, 1855). His collection was dispersed in a major auction during which the Museum of Ornamental Art at Marlborough House, which later became the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A), was the biggest single buyer.\r\n","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"Powder Flask, ivory, brightly coloured and circular, carved with a hunting scene, Germany, ca. 1830-50","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Inventory of Art Objects Acquired in the Year 1855. <u>In</u>: <u>Inventory of the Objects in the Art Division of the Museum at South Kensington, Arranged According to the Dates of their Acquisition. Vol I</u>. London: Printed by George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode for H.M.S.O., 1868, p. 93"},{"reference":{"text":"Longhurst, Margaret H., <u>Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory</u>. Part II. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1929","id":"AUTH329986"},"details":"p.89","free":""},{"reference":{"text":"Penny, Nicholas. <u>Catalogue of European Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum</u>, 3 volumes, Oxford, 1992","id":"AUTH329977"},"details":"Volume II, p.130","free":""},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Kuhn, Dr. <u>Katalog für die Ausstellung der Werke älterer Meister</u>. Part II: <u>Katalog der Kunst und Kunstindustrie-Ausstellung alter und neuer deutscher Meister</u>. Munich, Glaspalast, 1876, cat. no. 557"},{"reference":{"text":"Maskell, W. <u>A Description of the Ivories Ancient and Medieval in the South Kensington Museum</u>, London, 1872","id":"AUTH330219"},"details":"p. 51","free":""},{"reference":{"text":"Trusted, Marjorie, <u>Baroque & Later Ivories</u>, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 2013","id":"AUTH329728"},"details":"p.438","free":""}],"production":"","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[{"text":"rabbits","id":"x30481"},{"text":"horsemen","id":"x44924"}],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[],"partNumbers":["2161-1855"],"accessionNumberNum":"2161","accessionNumberPrefix":"","accessionYear":1855,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2025-09-22","recordCreationDate":"2008-05-01","availableToBook":false}}