Tortoiseshell & Silver, Opera Cane. France, circa 1900

A very elegant cane fashioned with a high quality luminous sepia shadow of the Tortoiseshell, it is crowned with a silver spherical handle. The handle is 6 cm high and the diameter is 3,5 cm. The nicely fluting and slender veneer shaft shows a superb cloudy structure in a wide and warm toned colour range with pretty shadows spotting. There is a horn tip and the O.L. is 92 cm. No chips or cracks, perfect condition, with this cane you will feel the most perfect load-balancing on canes in your hands. Fortunately it has survived intact inside a cupboard.

Tortoiseshell canes were among the most expensive materials of their time and very difficult to manipulate. Its construction involved heating, stretching and fussing of the massive tortoiseshell in technology that is now long lost. Tortoiseshell is a very fragile material, that’s the reason why a few examples have survive. Paris specialized in tortoiseshell articles had the best artists in that field.

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