Silver Dragon Cane

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The 2022 Cane Masterpiece Auction

By Kimball Sterling

Dec 3, 2022

Set Reminder 2022-12-03 13:00:00 2022-12-03 13:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : The 2022 Cane Masterpiece Auction https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/kimball-sterling/the-2022-cane-masterpiece-auction-11295
The European Masterpiece Cane Collection Kimball Sterling kimballsterling@earthlink.net

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• Lot Description
  -Ca. 1900 -L-shaped silver handle modeled in fine and high relief with a dragon. The fabled animal is reduced to a frightening head on two mighty front paws and parades a large open mouth topped by a pair of long whiskers and large round eyes to extend with erected, long and wavy hair. Surrounded by suggested clouds, it stands above a blank oval cartouche flanked by what seems to be, two chiropteras. The handle extends in an integral collar with fringed prongs holding an impressive natural tooth, supposedly of a dragon, which turned up after scientific examination to be a small whale incisor. -The handle comes on a fitly scarred medlar shaft somehow suggestive of a prodigious animal-scaled skin. More and above, the shaft comes with an iron ferrule extending in a redoubtable, square tapering and pointed spike, which and when necessary, becomes a redoubtable weapon. -Way out of the Far Eastern masses export ware, this cane must have been a singular, made to order and costly commission of the British Colonial Era. It falls in the visually striking category, and, with a taste for the unusual, it ticks all the right boxes of as a great conversation piece. -H. 4 ½” x 2 ½”, O.L. 35 ½” -$400-$500 -Dragons combine the characteristics of the four elements, earth, air, fire and water; they symbolize light and dark, the sun and moon, masculine and feminine, and the unity underlying these opposing forces. The dragon possesses the wings of a bird and the scales of a snake or fish. It breathes fire and often guards a hoard of treasure in its lair. In the East and in pre-Christian Europe the dragon was seen as helpful and kind - indeed, the red dragon is the emblem of Wales - but Christianity, which saw the serpent as a symbol of evil, also viewed the dragon as a creature of ill-omen, representing destructiveness and inner chaos. The Chinese Dragon is a symbol of the Emperor, of male energy and of fertility; it is a benign animal and the fifth creature of the Chinese zodiac. It guards the East and represents sunrise, spring, and the rains. Indeed, torrential rain is known as dragon rain. There are four types of dragons in Chinese legend: Dragons of the air, the earth, the water and the spirit.
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