Stags and Dogs

National Museum of Scotland  A.1961.502B-D

At this point, I have only seen the one dog in the National Museum of Scotland collection.  He is about 8 cm in length.  But I am assuming that there must be a few more out there.  It seems that once you see one item that is intriguing like these, you find more.  It also lends some credence to the idea that these were either sold or class projects - otherwise we wouldn't find so many similar objects.   

So it shouldn't be a surprise that there are more stag's out there too.  I found two in a very interesting and unique shadowbox in a private collection.  I had seen the auction picture of this piece somewhere (I try to keep records, but in this case I think it was in someone's personal library and I just can't find it online!!  If you know of it - send me a scan).  So I was quite excited when I turned the corner on a tour of a collector's home and found the original!  While I was allowed to take pictures for my research, I don't have permission to share them so I will do my best to describe my drawing (which is quite lacking talent!).  

The shadowbox was about 3" deep and over a foot tall.  The top surface was lined with a geometric wrapped card and another one was along the bottom of the back of the shadowbox.  The rest of the background was a traditional late 17th/early 18th century floral vase filled with flowers; all worked in detached needlelace.  The urn itself was blue and had a holie point voided date of 1712.  MB were the initials on either side.

The two sides were fabricated out of flowers with leaves and petals cut from sleaven silk and glued in place.  Shells and spanish moss filled the bottom along with three small vases with sleaven silk flowers.  And the piece-de-reistance, two wire stags made from silver bullions!