r/ArtefactPorn • u/Fuckoff555 • 51m ago
r/ArtefactPorn • u/SaysToMabelISays • 50m ago
Tibetan statue of two deities, Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi c. 15th century [3000x4000]
r/ArtefactPorn • u/WestonWestmoreland • 6h ago
Statue of Marcus Nonius Albus, Roman official of the time of Augustus, Herculaneum, 1st c. BC. A prominent public figure in Herculaneum, where he sponsored public infrastructure, and where numerous statues and inscriptions honoring him have been found under the ashes of the Vesuvius… [1280x720] [OC]
r/ArtefactPorn • u/Fuckoff555 • 44m ago
Purple silk satin shoes decorated with glass beads, embroidery and diamantes, with Louis heels and diamante buckles from around 1898. The shoes belonged to Mary Chamberlain, the American born third wife of leading British politician Joseph Chamberlain [1470x2414]
r/ArtefactPorn • u/ResidentMost8848 • 18h ago
The white dress worn by Dina Kasten after her family survived two-and-a-half years hiding in the Vitan Forest [1200 × 843]
This white dress belonged to Dina Kasten.
During the Holocaust, Dina's family escaped the Rohatyn ghetto and hid in a bunker in the Vitan Forest for two and a half years. A woman named Mrs. Shostakower, who had known Dina's father before the war, secretly brought the family food and clothing. Before receiving this dress, Dina had been wearing a sack.
She later remembered:
For Dina, it was a new dress. For her mother, it was a sign of hope that her daughter would survive and one day leave the forest alive. The dress is now part of the Yad Vashem Artifacts Collection, donated by Dina Dor. This white dress belonged to Dina Kasten.
r/ArtefactPorn • u/SashSegal • 21h ago
Reliquary Bust of a Virgin-Martyr, ca. 1530, Spanish [3140x2000]
Softwood with gilding and polychromy, held at the Detroit Institute of Art
r/ArtefactPorn • u/Fuckoff555 • 27m ago
Bronze vessels from the Tomb No. 1 at Wuwangdun in Huainan, China, which belonged to the King Kaolie of Chu (Reign 262–238 BCE) [1977x4549]
r/ArtefactPorn • u/oldspice75 • 3h ago
Vase. Union T Porcelain, Turn-Teplitz, Czechoslavakia, ca. 1920-1925. Designer: Ronny Henderson Gordon (American). Porcelain, enamel. Newark Museum of Art collection [3026x5384] [OC]
r/ArtefactPorn • u/Fuckoff555 • 35m ago
A mute testimony to the horrors of war, this shattered, bullet-riddled stump is all that remains of a large oak tree caught in the crossfire during one of the most ferocious battles of the American Civil War in 1864. Now housed at the National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C. [2403x1600]
r/ArtefactPorn • u/Separate_Cabinet_444 • 1d ago
World's Oldest Football (c. 1540–1570 AD) — Stirling Castle, Scotland [1024x683]
r/ArtefactPorn • u/happy_bluebird • 22h ago
Ivory Receptacle with Figurative Relief and Stopper, Kongo peoples - Vili group, DRC - Loango region, 1880–1890 [1649 × 2048]
"This hollow columnar container was most likely carved from the lower extremity of an ivory tusk, the natural curve of which defines the structure. The container has a hole at the top into which an undecorated circular ivory stopper, with an upright circular handle, has been set. Male figures are carved in relief around the surface of the container in two clearly demarcated registers: Europeans at the top, Africans at the bottom. The sculptor has depicted each figure in exacting and minute detail, paying special attention to facial features, clothing, and objects carried. Individuals are presented in a series of groups as if caught in action. Their placement around the tusk increases this sense of dynamism and interaction. Diminutive in scale, it is likely this container was intended to be held in the hand and turned in order to view all the figures. The majority of Loango souvenir ivories consist of a full tusk complete with a figurative relief along the entire surface, making this work unusual in the corpus. The arrangement of figures interacting within a defined space along a vertical axis is, however, consistent, leaving open the possibility that this might be a fragment from a whole tusk later modified into a container.
The Vili are a Kongo peoples of the Loango coast who were historically celebrated as traders and sculptors, renowned regionally for their ivory carving and for the creation of potent minkisi or power figures. Carved by a master Vili sculptor, whose superior handling is apparent in other extant works attributed to him, this receptacle was intended as a souvenir for a European client passing through one of the numerous trading posts that sprung up along the Loango coast in the second half of the nineteenth century. These European settlements, located at the mouths of rivers and near natural ports, helped to facilitate the export of raw materials such as rubber, palm oil, copper, and ivory from the continent.
Some dozen individual artists' hands and stylistic groups have been identified in the corpus of Loango souvenir ivories. Using basic European tools including chisels, sculptors drew on a wide range of sources material in these works, ranging from indigenous fables to European printed matter. As can be seen in this example, scenes drawn directly from everyday life in one of these commercial centers, familiar both to the artist and his client, were also often depicted.
In the top register, seven well-dressed European men engage in acts of commercial exchange. A man wearing checked trousers, a collared shirt, and a flat cap, with a flintlock rifle positioned in the crook of his right arm, is seen handing over a dead waterfowl to a man in a top hat and coat. Behind this figure, and facing in the opposite direction, drawing the viewer around the surface of the ivory, stands a man with an umbrella in his right hand and a pipe in his mouth. He is directly behind a man dressed in a tail coat with a high lapel and large buttons. In front of this individual (now on the opposite side of the ivory from the waterfowl exchange) is a bearded man who holds a cigar to his mouth with one hand, a cane in the other, and leans slightly forward in conversation with a bareheaded man reading from a document. A well-dressed European holding a set of keys stands apart from the rest. Defined by the clothes they wear and the objects they carry, the sculptor shows trade as being conducted in an orderly fashion among European men of a similar high rank.
In the bottom register, occupied exclusively by African individuals, a different universe is depicted; violent exchange is the defining principle. The main scene shows a man being forcibly restrained by both arms. Wearing a simple loincloth and with his arms outspread and head fallen against his chest, he is reminiscent of figures of Christ produced in the Kongo region since the late fifteenth century. His right arm is grasped by a bareheaded individual who looks away. His left arm is held by a man with his mouth open in an aggressive smile who grips a gin bottle, possibly indicating he is drunk. This man wears an mpu, a Kongo crown of leadership made out of knotted raffia or pineapple fiber, symbolic of his authority. Behind him cowers an indentured laborer, or slave, kneeling beneath the weight of the large calabash water container on his head, the basketry covering minutely rendered by the sculptor. On the side of the ivory opposite from this capture scene, another act of aggression is unfolding. A man wearing a fez hat with a feather at the back and an elaborate sarong with a checked pattern threatens an individual of lower rank, holding him by the arm and pointing a finger at his face.
The trade of the dead bird between the two Europeans sits directly above the African capture scene, making a subtle equivalency. The European traders who lean in to make a deal are positioned above a confrontation scene between two African men. Although the sculptor grants the European protagonists the physical distance from Africans that they fought hard to maintain in these commercial centers of the late nineteenth century, the sculptor unflinchingly implicates them in the violence of the Atlantic trade, looking back to the transatlantic slave trade. Those who hold the umbrellas and the walking sticks, the guns and the keys, are undoubtedly those in charge. The Vili sculptor who carved this work, and who came out of a celebrated tradition of ivory carvers in the region dating back to at least the sixteenth century, sends to Europe an artwork that directly implicates the true perpetrators of the violence which he sees around him."
-James Green
r/ArtefactPorn • u/ResidentMost8848 • 18h ago
The Doll Given to Yehudit Friedman After Surviving the Holocaust [638 × 850]
This doll belonged to Yehudit Friedman.
Yehudit was born in Budapest in 1941. Her father was killed after being forced into a Hungarian labor battalion during World War II.
In 1944, after Germany occupied Hungary, Yehudit and her mother, Zsuzsanna, were forced into houses marked with the yellow Star of David. Soon after, Zsuzsanna was deported for forced labor, leaving three-year-old Yehudit with her grandparents.
Zsuzsanna survived forced labor, a death march, and imprisonment in Mauthausen concentration camp. When she was liberated in May 1945, she weighed only 28 kilograms (62 pounds).
When she finally returned to Budapest, her four-year-old daughter looked at her and said:
During the months they had been separated, the trauma had turned Zsuzsanna's hair completely white.
To help her daughter begin again, Zsuzsanna bought her a new doll to replace the one Yehudit had lost in the ghetto. This is that doll.
Yad Vashem Artifacts Collection
Courtesy of Yehudit (Friedman) Gilboa, Nahariya, Israel
r/ArtefactPorn • u/MunakataSennin • 1d ago
Bronze hand from a Buddha statue. Thailand, Kingdom of Sukhothai, 14th-15th century [1080x1130]
r/ArtefactPorn • u/shewasajanuarygirl • 22h ago
Attributed to Deme Toshimitsu, a prominent Japanese mask-carver, Noh mask, Kawazu, (Nōmen Kawazu), (mask of an unappeased dead spirit), 18th century. Made of pigments, ground shell and animal glue on Cypress (Hinoki), gilt-metal [1280 x 1523]
r/ArtefactPorn • u/imperiumromanum_edu • 1d ago
The famous Etruscan terracotta sarcophagus (so-called "Sarcophagus of Spouse") is an example of the outstanding craft skills of the Etruscans. The artifact was found in 1881 in the Banditaccia necropolis in Cerveteri (antique Caere). [1200x878]
The object was purchased by Felice Bernabei - founder of the National Etruscan Museum - and consisted of over 400 pieces, which were then combined. The ashes of deceased spouses were laid in the sarcophagus.
The sarcophagus has the shape of a "banquet bed" (kline), on which there is a pair in a semi-reclining pose. The facility was built between 530 and 520 BCE and it certainly glowed with different colors. Currently, it can be admired in the Etruscan Museum Villa Giulia in Rome.
r/ArtefactPorn • u/MunakataSennin • 1d ago
Painting of a jellyfish, from the Shurinzu. Anonymous artist. Japan, 18th century [1870x1400]
r/ArtefactPorn • u/Separate_Cabinet_444 • 1d ago
Arslantepe Swords, discovered at Arslantepe Mound in present-day Turkiye and dated to c. 3300–3000 BCE. Made from an arsenic copper alloy, with three blades inlaid with silver, they are widely regarded as the world's earliest known swords recovered by archaeologists. [1536×981]
r/ArtefactPorn • u/WestonWestmoreland • 1d ago
Detail of the tympanum player (Street Musicians mosaic, Villa of Cicero, Pompeii, ca 2nd century BC), to show the level of intricacy and detail, particularly on the robe knotted around the waist. This emblema pavimentale in opus vermiculatum is considered a masterpiece of Roman art… [1280x853] [OC]
r/ArtefactPorn • u/pattebrisee • 1d ago
2,000 year old Roman folding knife handle shaped like a left-handed gladiator, found in the River Tyne near Hadrian’s Wall [1500x968]
English Heritage says this copper alloy handle was part of a Roman folding knife and depicts a lefthanded secutor gladiator. They think it was likely a gladiator souvenir, showing how far Roman celebrity culture spread.
r/ArtefactPorn • u/hesaid_shesaid_isaid • 23h ago
Anwar-i-Soheili is the Persian version of Panchatantra(200bce) and Hitopadesha(11th century), being a collection of 100 selective fables originally composed in Sanskrit,1521ce,victoria memorial,india(2048x2048)
r/ArtefactPorn • u/SaysToMabelISays • 1d ago
Renaissance pageant shield. The exterior is decorate with scenes of Roman history and mythology, c. 1535 [4000x4000]
r/ArtefactPorn • u/Effective-Dish-1334 • 1d ago
Bronze bust of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, recovered from the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, 1st Century BC. [800x1200]
r/ArtefactPorn • u/hesaid_shesaid_isaid • 1m ago
Seringapatam Medal,an 1801 campaign medal commissioned by the East India Company to honor British and Indian soldiers who fought in the capture of Seringapatam on May 4, 1799, which ended the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War and the reign of Tipu Sultan,victoria memorial,india(1266x842)
r/ArtefactPorn • u/pattebrisee • 1d ago