Folk Art of Europe & Rest of World »
Europe » Miniature Coffer with Inscriptions
Ref: 2995
The plank built beechwood coffer resembling a sarcophagus tomb but used as a dowry box was found throughout the highlands of Eastern and South Eastern Europe. Several countries, including Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, Hungary, claim old examples of these as a quintessential symbols of their folk heritage.
This one is not an old one but a mid 20th century miniature copy or homage to the tradition, it is very skilfully made and inscribed in Hungarian, Emlekul a sovarad pionirpiktol which means approximately "Remember us the students of Sovarad" (a town).
So this appears to be a piece commissioned for somebody as a gift perhaps a parting gift from students to a professor...of carpentry, history or ethnography? The box is a Magyarised version of it's type, with the feet forming tulips (a national symbol).
On the top is a dove with an olive branch - it could be a reference to the recipient travelling to foreign lands but this is also a common motif of the time, a reminder of how the Soviet rulers actively encouraged folk heritage and through propaganda proposed feelings of national sentiment to be part of not contra to the broader fraternity and family of International Peace and Socialism.
Hungary c. 1950s
H: 34cm (13.4in)
W: 37cm (14.6in)
D: 24cm (9.4in)
£365
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