Ca. 1890-Large silver crook handle modeled in very fine detail with the head of a knight with armor helmet above a chain-mail shirt, well figured calamander shaft and a long horn ferrule. This cane is obviously hand crafted with passion in the fully developed Art Nouveau style and made by the culture for the culture. It belongs to a very desirable small series of cane handles attributed to Lucien Galliard and tentatively identified as an idealized portrait of Richard the Lionheart or Richard Coeur de Lion. Art Nouveau canes of this quality are quite rare and this one is in superb condition.
H. 4 ½” x 3”, O.L. 37”
Richard Coeur de Lion, (born September 8, 1157, Oxford, England-died April 6, 1199, Châlus, duchy of Aquitaine), duke of Aquitaine (from 1168) and of Poitiers (from 1172) and king of England, duke of Normandy, and count of Anjou (1189-99). His knightly manner and his prowess in the Third Crusade (1189-92) made him a popular king in his own time as well as the hero of countless romantic legends. He has been viewed less kindly by more recent historians and scholars.
Lucien Gaillard was the son and grandson of Parisian jewelers, as well as the brother of the noted Art Nouveau furniture designer Eugène Gaillard. After Lucien took over the family firm in 1892, the emphasis switched to metalworking. Around the turn of the century, with the encouragement of his friend René Lalique, Gaillard turned back to jewelry. His designs, like many by Lalique, incorporated unusual materials such as horn and ivory combined with more traditional precious stones, gold and enamel. Galliard won a prize for his jewelry at the 1889 Universal Exposition and was a judge at the 1893 Universal Exposition in Chicago. In 1902 he was made a knight of the French Legion d’Honneur.
Calamander or coromandel is a valuable wood from Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. It is a hazel-brown color, with black stripes (or the other way about), very heavy and hard. It is also known as Macassar ebony or variegated ebony and is closely related to genuine ebony, but is obtained from different species in the same genus, one of these is Diospyros quaesita Thwaites, from Sri Lanka. The name "calamander" comes from the local Sinhalese name, kalu-medhiriya, which means dark chamber, referring to the characteristic ebony black wood. It is used in furniture, luthiery and for high grade canes and walking sticks. Calamander has been logged to extinction over the last two to three hundred years and is no longer available for new work in any quantity. Furniture in calamander is so expensive and so well looked after that even recycling it is an unlikely source.