Soldiers in armour and king on the castle battlements; knight with shields and swords; shield with a rampant lion; swords; castle with rounded windows in its lower part, out of which figures are leaning; incised foliated scrolls (rinceaux).
Longhurst 1929: England, 13th century.
Williamson and Davies 2014: England, mid 13th century.
Attribution
Unknown
Polychromy - Gilding
Traces of polychromy: blackened paint in deeply-cut sections and foliage.
Reverse
Carved in the round.
Object Condition
Missing: the faces of all the figures; the right attendant's head; some of the crenelations.
The bottom is badly chipped. Damage to the top. Hole drilled through dome.
Provenance
Acquired by the museum in 1863 (in Paris, according to Longhurst 1929).
Bibliography
HMSO, Inventory of the Objects in the Art Division of the Museum at South Kensington, arranged According to the Dates of their Acquisition (London, 1868), p. 36.
W. Maskell, Ivories Ancient and Mediaeval in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872), pp. 38-39.
H. J. R. Murray, A History of Chess (London, 1913), p. 762 n. 9.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, p. 470 n. 1.
M. Longhurst, English Ivories (London, 1926), no. XLVI, pp. 38, 99, pl. 42.
A. Goldschmidt, Die Elfenbeinskulpturen aus der romanischen Zeit (Berlin, 1926), p.8, fig. 20.
M. Longhurst, Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2 vols (London, 1927 and 1929), II (1929), p. 8, pl. II.
Exhibition of English Mediaeval Art, exhibition catalogue, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1930, cat. no. 194.
D. M. Liddell, Chessmen (New York, 1937), p.144.
D. A. Porter, Ivory Carvings in Later Medieval England 1200-1400, State University of New York at Binghamton, PhD 1974 (Ann Arbor, 1986: University Microfilms International), pp. 73-75, no. 20.
Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400, ed. by J. J. G. Alexander and Paul Binski, exhibition catalogue, London, Royal Academy of Arts, 1987, no. 145 (N. Stratford).
R. H. Randall, The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Ivory Carvings in North American Collections (New York, 1993), p.120.
P. Williamson and G. Davies, Medieval Ivory Carvings 1200-1550 (London, 2014), no. 245.
J. Warren, Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum, 3 vols (Oxford, 2014), Vol. 2: Sculptures in Stone, Clay, Ivory, Bone and Wood, p. 549, in relation to no. 156.
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