Art Price Index: The Curious, Ever Fashionable Shell

Published on 23 September 2022, by Anne Doridou-Heim

Animal, object and curiosity of nature all in one, the shell questions and fascinates us.

€26,000 Nautilus cup, silver gilt mount with repoussé decoration of waves and a triton,... Art Price Index: The Curious, Ever Fashionable Shell

€26,000
Nautilus cup, silver gilt mount with repoussé decoration of waves and a triton, Augsburg, 17th century, upper section probably later, h. 28 cm/11.2 in, gross weight: 505 g/17.8 oz. Cannes, April 6, 2018. Azur Enchères Auction House. Émeric and Stephen Portier.

Since antiquity, the shell has always been popular. An attribute of the goddess Aphrodite, it was used as an ornament in Roman grottos, a curiosity in the cabinets of Renaissance humanists, an exchange currency in distant civilizations, an object endowed with multiple…

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