3-021-049 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Art Collections in the South Kensington Museum: Byzantine casket of bonework, set in ebony, 1869. One of '...a variety of specimens of antique or foreign art-manufactures in the Loan Collection and other departments of the South Kensington Museum...One of these articles is a four-sided casket, about 10 in. in length and height, and 7 in. wide, composed of bone panels carved in low relief, with figures of warriors surrounded by a rosette border. The top consists of an ivory panel sculptured in high relief, with a representation of horsemen and men on foot engaged in combat. This top panel is a more ancient piece than the rest: it is supposed to be of Byzantine workmanship, and of the ninth or tenth century. The present setting (in ebony) is of the sixteenth or seventeenth century. This casket was presented to the museum by Mr. R. Goff'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.