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Aluminium shell dish · with reclining female nude

Cast aluminium · figure cast in one · art nouveau motif

Item no. 060-404-000

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Description

A shallow cast aluminium dish in the form of a shell — and along the lower rim lies a female nude, cast in one with it: head turned to the side, long hair over the shoulder, arms stretched above the head, the body following the curve of the shell.

The motif

The woman in the shell is one of the great motifs of art nouveau — the line runs from Botticelli's Venus to the nymphs and naiads who lay on dishes, ashtrays, inkwells and paperweights around 1900. The appeal is that the figure does not sit on the dish but is its rim: where her body ends, the shell begins.

The material

Aluminium, not pewter: light in the hand, bright silvery, without pewter's dark tarnish. Cast aluminium was the standard for such decorative and bar items from the fifties on — the form quotes art nouveau, the material is half a century younger.