Ambergris and vermeil sweetmeat, Ottoman... - Lot 248 - Ader

Lot 248
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Estimation :
3000 - 5000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 6 400EUR
Ambergris and vermeil sweetmeat, Ottoman... - Lot 248 - Ader
Ambergris and vermeil sweetmeat, Ottoman Empire, 19th centuryAmbergris globular box with domed lid decorated with swirling stripes. The lid finished with a vermeil aviform grip emerging from a plant corolla and the base encircled with a vermeil mount taken up on the top of the body. Height: 11 cm Numerous legends have developed around ambergris, making this material ever more mysterious: if the Chinese, 2000 years BC , called it "perfume", it is because it is a natural product. C. called it "dragon's slime perfume", Avicenna thought that ambergris came from an underwater fountain, probably inspired by the Thousand and One Nights where Sindbad the sailor sees amber gushing out of a spring before it is swallowed by sea monsters... In reality, it is a secretion that forms in the stomach or intestines of the sperm whale and is then rejected by the animal's natural ways. Fossilized by time, sea salt and the sun, it is recovered from the surface of the water or washed up on the beaches where it is collected in blocks. Since the highest antiquity, men find medicinal virtues to it but also odoriferous and aphrodisiac. From a medical point of view, it has long been used as a remedy for asthma and epilepsy. The Arabs also used it to treat joints, digestive disorders, the heart and the brain. Arrived in Europe in the Middle Ages at a high price, it was worn as a necklace, often set in a piece of gold-plated jewellery called a scented apple or pomander, and breathed in to strengthen one's immune system against health scourges such as the plague. A powerful scent-fixing agent, ambergris was an essential component of 20th-century perfumes; today it has been replaced by synthetic accords. The aphrodisiac effect of the resin was recognized very early, already in ancient China. In 18th century Europe, libertines, like the great Casanova, used to perfume their hot chocolate with it to be invigorated. The resin was also used to perfume women's gloves and could be consumed in the form of lozenges to be sucked. The seductive power of ambergris did not escape the Ottoman sultans who used it daily in the form of tablets to be dissolved in hot coffee. Our object, whose body and lid were entirely made of this rare material, shows a different use in the Ottoman context than the "pastilles du sérail" so called by the French: we find the idea of the sweet apple appreciated in medieval Europe diffusing powerful odours in the room where it was placed or perfuming the objects which could be contained inside. An Ottoman ambergris and silver-gilt pomander, 19th century
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