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Lot 333B
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19th C. Brass Kylix - Grand Tour Footed Wine Cup after the Antique
19th C. Brass Kylix - Grand Tour Footed Wine Cup after the Antique
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Europe, Italy, Neoclassical, Grand Tour, ca. 1800–1899 CE. A diminutive footed cup cast in brass and finished with a deep verdigris patina, modeled after the ancient Greek kylix. The shallow bowl rises from a turned, stepped pedestal foot, its underside girdled by a band of finely worked laurel or wave-pattern ornament. Two scrolling horizontal handles spring from the rim, each terminating in lobed, leaf-like thumb-rests in the antique manner. Produced as a Grand Tour souvenir, such miniatures answered the nineteenth-century traveler's appetite for tangible echoes of classical antiquity, faithful in silhouette to the wine vessels of ancient symposia yet conceived purely as objects of refined display. The dark, mottled surface, artificially patinated to evoke excavated bronze, lends the little cup the gravitas of a relic recovered from Pompeii or Herculaneum. Size: 4.8" W x 2.5" H x 3.5" D (12.2 cm W x 6.3 cm H x 8.9 cm D).

The Grand Tour, the extended cultural pilgrimage through Italy and the classical Mediterranean undertaken by European aristocrats from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, generated a brisk trade in souvenirs. Workshops in Naples, Rome, and Florence supplied reduced bronze and brass copies of celebrated antiquities, the kylix among the most recognizable for its two-handled, stemmed profile. These pieces were prized as parlor ornaments and tokens of erudition, signaling their owner's first-hand acquaintance with the ruins of the ancient world. The deliberate patination, here a green-black accretion, was applied to mimic the cuprite and malachite surfaces of genuinely buried metalwork.

Provenance: private Charlotte, North Carolina, USA collection; ex-Joel Malter collection, prior to 2004

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Item # 203296

  • Condition: Excellent. Small chip to interior, but, otherwise, Intact and excellent with rich patina and good detail.

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by Artemis Fine Arts
June 25, 2026 9:00 AM MDT
686 S. Taylor Avenue
Suite 108
Louisville, CO, US 80027

Artemis Fine Arts

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Bid Increments
From: To: Increments:
$0 $299 $25
$300 $999 $50
$1,000 $1,999 $100
$2,000 $4,999 $250
$5,000 $9,999 $500
$10,000 $19,999 $1,000
$20,000 $49,999 $2,500
$50,000 $99,999 $5,000
$100,000 $199,999 $10,000
$200,000 + $20,000