MORE BONE COUCHES

By R. V. NICHOLLS, F.S.A.

1979 SAW THE PUBLICATION of a Roman couch with remarkable carved bone decoration now in
the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.1 As the many elements of its ornament were assembled,
their inner surfaces gave the exact shape of the long-vanished wooden members that they once
covered, enabling the Museum's technicians to carry out a partial restoration of the couch
(fig. i). 2 The purpose of this article is to publish some other carvings from such Roman bone
couches that have been given to the Fitzwilliam Museum since. It will, however, be most helpful
first to touch briefly on the main developments in this field since 1979.
Following the restoration of the Cambridge example, there has been renewed interest in
these 'bone couches' which include some of the most richly decorated furniture that we have
from the ancient world. In 1984 Cesare Letta published his work on the examples from the Valle
d'Amplero,3 his restored couch itself being put on display in 1989. His most important
contribution lies in the exhausive list and bibliography that he has assembled covering known
finds of such bone carvings from couches,4 nearly all of them from burials,5 although many of
them fail to rival the quality of the Cambridge couch and hardly any match its condition and
completeness; his list does, however, omit some major groups of such carvings in American
collections, in Baltimore,6 Boston,7 Malibu, 8 New York9 and Richmond.10 Against this broader
background, he argues that such couches began to be made in Italy in the course of the second
century BC, inspired by the luxury furniture in ivory or bronze from the Hellenistic world, and
ceased there in the mid-first century AD, to be followed by a lesser provincial production in
Gallia Cisalpina and possibly elsewhere.11 It seems, too, that these Italian workshops main-
tained some kind of'copy-books', possibly in the form of samples of earlier carvings, so that
much older motifs were exactly repeated later. In the Cambridge example, it had already been
noted how the leg-sculptures seemed to strike an earlier note, but that the couch itself appeared
to date to shortly after the Battle of Actium, perhaps to c. 30-20 BC, on the evidence of the kithara-
playing Apollo figures on the frame, apparently carved before their canonical Augustan form
had fully evolved from its Greek prototypes.
In a splendidly illustrated study, E. Talamo has restored, at least on paper, the rich bone
decoration of a couch from a cremation burial on the Esquiline excavated in 1874.12 This makes
an important contribution, because it establishes the role of a number of elements and motifs
known from other finds, but not yet adequately understood. Also, in 1989 Sabine Faust, who
had collaborated with Letta on his lists, published a detailed account of the fulcra, the framed
bolsters with decorated sides set at the ends of Hellenistic and Roman couches, covering both
the bronze and the bone or ivory decoration of these.13 Her study is comprehensive, but not
exhaustive, omitting, for example, the bronze examples in the Fitzwilliam.14
One of the reasons for the Fitzwilliam's acquiring the carvings from which the Cambridge
couch was assembled was the dearth of such material in British public collections, even though
numerous examples had passed through the London market over the years.15 Several of these
last were, however, secured by Sir Henry Wellcome (1853-1936) and were subsequently given
to the Fitzwilliam Museum by the Wellcome Trustees in 1982-3.16 As these have remained
 MORE BONE COUCHES 37

FIG. I. Fitzwilliam Museum: foot end of Roman couch with carved bone
decoration, restored 1973-4
38 THE ANTIQUARIES JOURNAL
unknown to the studies mentioned earlier, it is now proposed to publish them here and discuss
them against our growing understanding of such couches.
Letta has suggested dividing the Roman bone couches into two classes. The first of these, to
which many of the finest belong, including the Cambridge and Esquiline examples, he regards
as inspired by Hellenistic ivory couches.17 Within this category, one may cite a group of
twelve figure-carvings formerly in the C. J. Tabor collection, acquired by Wellcome in 1928
(figs. 2, 3a).18 Nine of these are reliefs of Cupids, four of them moving to the spectator's right, five
to his left, in a sort of flying run with their feet seemingly clear of the ground.19 Apart from the
directions faced and distinct variations in size, they are all very similar to each other and all
seem to have held an identical rectangular object between their hands in front of them. Where
preserved, its face is turned to the front and decorated in one case with an incised St Andrew's
cross and in the others with incised parallel lines.20 Two further carvings are clearly just
fragments from identical larger compositions in high relief.21 They each show a slightly plump
man wearing an exomis, a sort of short girdled tunic fastened at the left shoulder, standing with
his left foot on a raised outcrop of rock. He is holding a struggling Cupid across his raised left leg
and appears to have brought his right hand down in the vicinity of his small captive's right
buttock. A little hand plucking at the man's left knee may suggest that a further Cupid stood
before him.
A possible criticism to be levelled against Letta's lists is that, in order to make them viable,
he has tended to restrict the possible subjects of the figured decoration and the positions in

FIG. 2. Fitzwilliam Museum: bone carvings from a Roman couch formerly in the Tabor collection, given
by the Wellcome Trustees in 1982
 MORE BONE COUCHES 39
which they might occur. On his criteria, the first nine Cupids would automatically be taken as
from a small cylindrical frieze on each of the couch legs and the other two reliefs as from a taller
cylindrical frieze above it. Such units of decoration for some couches were first tentatively
proposed by the author, more widely identified by Letta and are now established by Talamo's
restoration.22 The Cambridge couch has a plain, drum-shaped member under the free-standing
sculptures of its legs (fig. i). It is this position that seems, on some couches, to have been taken
by the small Cupid friezes, while the sculptures above were replaced by the second cylindrical
frieze. Both the drum-members and the bell-shaped members of the legs show the same concave
edge-moulding. Where the Cupid friezes occur, this is also associated with a distinctive tongue
pattern. The same combination, however, also recurs on some bell-shaped members with foliate
decoration23 and one of the difficulties still to be resolved is whether some of the small Cupid
friezes might not also have occurred on such members.24
The problem with the above interpretation is that the Wellcome Cupids are rather too
large and that they are flat-backed appliques suggesting that the surface to which they were
glued and pegged was itself flat.25 The flat back edges and curved outer surface of the associated
fragmentary groups seem also to favour their having been attached to the flat background of the
frame in the position occupied by the Apollo figures on the Cambridge example.26 The Esquiline
couch shows that relief scenes with Cupids could also fill the flat panels at the sides of thefulcra.21
There is also another possibility. Ivory applique reliefs apparently adorned the recessed panels
of the frame of the couch in the tomb of Philip II at Vergina28 and fourth-century BC and
Hellenistic representations attest the same practice,29 which apparently also continued in
Roman times,30 but it is not yet firmly established for the present class of bone couches where
floral or foliate ornament is more usual in these panels. The subject of these Wellcome reliefs is
uncertain. When they were first acquired the author tentatively suggested that they might show
Cupids rushing from school with their tablets and, if the other reliefs are connected in subject,
possibly schoolmasters spanking the slow learners; these last are, however, very incomplete.31
Also acquired with these reliefs was one of a head of the Gorgon, Medusa (fig. 3a),32 possibly
from the fulcrum of the same couch. If so, it was probably attached to an underlying larger flat
disc-shaped lamination that completed the medallion, carrying the rest of the wings, hair and
snakes.
Two further apparently isolated reliefs from the Wellcome gift are also of types now
conventionally ascribed to cylindrical leg-reliefs of the same kind, although their backs suggest
that they were attached to a flat surface.33 The winged Victory clad in a short girdled chiton worn
with a kolpos (fig. 3^)34 is an unusually large flat-backed applique carved in high relief with a
hollow interior, as a result of having used the whole bone. Her wings, arms, legs and the bottom
corner of her garment were completed by separate pieces of bone and a dowel-hole in the top of
her head was for adding a hair-knot. The standing girl (fig. 3c)35 is a shallower relief. Similar
figures are associated with heads not unlike those of the winged goddesses on the Cambridge
couch,36 but this relief was differently executed. The stele beside the girl has the crowning of a
Greek gravestone. Is the subject mythological and is this, for example, Electra at the tomb of
Agamemnon?
Much more questionably Letta regards his second class of bone couches, including the one
he restored, as having been inspired by Hellenistic examples in bronze.37 As recognized by
Talamo, they seem rather to be products of a coarser fabric, but one nevertheless related to the
first class. Instead of being built up out of laminations to give an ivory-like effect, their
sculptures tend either to be shaped from the whole hollow 'tube' of the bone (a procedure also
 FIG. 3. Fitzwilliam Museum, gifts of the Wellcome Trustees: a, bone carving from a Roman couch
formerly in the Tabor collection; b, c, e, isolated bone carvings of types associated with Roman couches;
d, Roman bone pyxis, acquired from the Brent collection with the couch carvings shown in figure 4
 MORE BONE COUCHES 41

FIG. 4. Fitzwilliam Museum: bone carvings from a Roman couch formerly in the Brent
collection, given by the Wellcome Trustees in 1982

not unknown in the first class)38 or else to be assembled as a bone veneer over a wooden core (as
with the busts decorating the legs of the Amplero couch or the large lion masks set on the frame
of many examples of this class).
The Wellcome gift also includes a group of carvings formerly in the Brent collection in
Canterbury that are from a couch of this class.39 Its legs were decorated with a large cylindrical
frieze of a kind especially common with these (fig. 4, top).40 This was made up of hollow 'tubes'
of bone assembled around a wooden core and with narrower pieces of bone filling the gaps
between the 'tubes', the relief decoration being carved on the surface so formed. This tends to
impose the sort of chubby, childlike proportions shown here, although the clumsiness of the
present examples has been exaggerated by surface erosion and the loss of their inlaid eyes. The
subject shown apparently combined Bacchus and his retinue (fig. 4, top, left and centre) with
the fight between Hercules and Apollo for the Delphic tripod (fig. 4, top, right). Also attested are
reliefs of overlapping leaves from each of two successive registers in the decoration of the bell-
shaped members of the legs of the couch (fig. 4, bottom left).41 There arc also apparently
42 THE ANTIQUARIES JOURNAL
elements from the medallion and finial of the fulcrum. The head of a Gorgon (fig. 4,
bottom, second from right)42 appears to have been assembled as a bone veneer over a wooden
boss; horizontal edges at the top and bottom seem to mark where other pieces of bone
were added to provide the top of the head and the underside of the chin. The bone 'tube'
carved into part of a lion's mane (fig. 4, bottom right)43 is probably from a. fulcrum finial and
not from a lion mask decorating the frame because of the relative smallness of the animal's head,
part of whose side is also preserved. Two other items acquired with these carvings may be
from the same burial: a fragment from a shallow lathe-turned ivory bowl44 and part of a
'Cupid pyxis' of a class attested from both Pompeii and Herculaneum and thus clearly current
in the first century AD or earlier.45 The present example (fig. 3d)46 shows Cupid as a bound
captive.
One of the isolated carvings from the Wellcome gift is also to be linked with this class where
its style finds close parallels in some of the cylindrical friezes decorating the legs (fig. 3«).47 It
apparently shows Bacchus wearing boots and a cloak and holding his thyrsos. The unusual thing
is that, instead of being confined to one face, as on the elements from the cylindrical friezes, the
carving extends round almost 270 degrees of the circumference of the slightly oval bone 'tube'.
Was this from a frieze set at the corner of the frame or was it a free-standing leg-sculpture or,
perhaps more probably, is it evidence that the makers of the second class of couches also
continued the tradition of Etruscan carved handles?
It is generally agreed, from the distribution of the couches, that the Italian centres
producing these two classes of work were to be located to the north of Rome. The author had
tentatively suggested Etruria because a local mature Hellenistic style seemed a prerequisite
and because there were possible links in style and subject between the couch decoration and
earlier Etruscan bone reliefs on handles, etc., not least in assigning wings to deities not normally
so endowed.48 But the strongest ties seemed right at the eastern edge of Etruria, where the
cineraria of Perugia depicted couches with leg-sculptures and even work of the present
second class, complete with lion masks on the frame.49 From the find-places of the earliest
examples, Letta has argued persuasively for centres further east, at or in the vicinity of
Ancona and Norcia.50 Talamo's suggestion that some of the most ornate examples of the first
class might be Alexandrian imports seems harder to justify on present evidence from Italy
and Egypt, although Alexandrian ivory couches may indeed have been a major source of
inspiration.51 There is one other small piece of evidence. Both classes had access to a glass-
working centre, normally only providing eyes and other small inlays, but extending to whole
fulcrum sides and frame panels on one or more bone couches of the second class in New York.52
The repetitive work on these larger zones of decoration marks them as the products of one of
the centres responsible for introducing mosaic-rod techniques into the early Roman glasswork
of Italy.
SUMMARY
This paper publishes some Roman bone carvings in the Fitzwilliam Museum collected by Sir Henry Wellcome
and given by the Wellcome Trustees in 1982-3. All seem to be from or associated with a range of elaborate
couches produced in Italy in Republican and Early Imperial times and found in burials there and in the
provinces. They have come to the Fitzwilliam largely because of that museum's earlier initiative in restoring such
a couch, described by the author in Archaeologia 106 (1979), 1-32.
 MORE BONE COUCHES 43

NOTES
1
Nicholls 1979; subsequently Treasures 1982, 23, seem to have continued in use for several years after
fig. 18; Letta 1984, 70, 75, 77-8, 81, 85-6, 92 no. 42; they had stopped being made and before forming
Vickers 1987, 53; Talamo 1987-8, 28, 32, 38, 53-4, part of a burial, e.g. the couch associated with a
69, 76, 80-3, 95, figs. 13-15, 62; Faust 1989, 165-6 Flavian cremation at Vindonissa (Nicholls 1979,
no. 66, pi. 29, 3; Doumeyrou 1989, 10-11, fig. 8. no. 13; Letta 1984, no. 44; Talamo 1987-8, fig.
This article was completed in 1990 and its biblio- 118).
12
graphy does not go beyond that date. Talamo, 1987-8.
2 13
Fitzwitliam Museum GR.3.1973, bought from Faust 1989.
14
the Cunliffe Fund and the Victoria and Albert The Dionysos medallion bequeathed by L. D.
Museum Grant-in-Aid. Restored height 084m. Cunliffe, GR. 119.1937; the panther or lioness finial
This and the other items reproduced by permission from the Spencer-Churchill collection, GR. 1.1976
of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum. (Annual Report Fitzwilliam Museum 1976, 9, pi. 6; its
3
Letta 1984. authenticity since questioned); and the less orthodox
4
It is not to be denied that the information medallions, apparently also from Roman furniture,
available on very many of his examples is woefully the connubial couple and their dog from Trinity
inadequate—a circumstance that had originally led College (Nicholls, 1970-1, 83, no. 23, fig. 12 top
the present author to restrict his comparanda' to a right) and the ajoure hunting roundel, GR.8.1931.
15
limited number of accessible groups of such carv- At that stage the only example known to the
ings that appeared to be coherent finds. But he has author was a lion mask from a couch in the City and
achieved wonders in ferreting out information on County Museum, Lincoln (Nicholls 1979, 32;
bygone Italian excavations and, in doing so, Letta 1984, no. 120). The items passing through
immeasurably enriched our understanding of this the London market were mostly only cursorily
whole class of material. listed, notable exceptions being Sotheby Catalogue,
5
An ivory bier was a feature of a sumptuous I3june 1966, lots 118-28.
16
burial and it has been suggested (Vickers 1987, 53) Given in accordance with the Order of Mr
that here bone has been substituted for ivory on Justice Foster of 21 March 1977.
17
items that were to be hidden away in the tomb. Letta 1984, 85-7, 97-100. The most relevant
Certainly the present rich range of bone couches ivory prototypes (ibid., nos. 19—20) remain un-
owes its preservation to its incorporation in both published.
18
cremation and inhumation burials and the ivory Wellcome collection nos. A 169456-A 169457;
couches that seem to approach it closest in elabora- Sotheby Catalogue, 12 November 1928, lot 275A.
tion (Letta 1984, nos. 19-20) have also survived 19
Fitzwilliam Museum GR.17-25.1982. Heights
because of their much rarer use in the same way. 3i-52mm. Very similar Cupids in Boston (Vermeule
6
Buitron and Oliver 1985, 66 no. 66, with fig. 1989. 2 78, pi. 55*-«)-
7
Vermeule 1989. Acquired by the Museum of 20
Only in some cases is it clearly differentiated
Fine Arts in 1928 from the E. P. Warren collection. from the Cupid's hands holding it at each end.
These couches seem more likely to have reached 21
Fitzwilliam Museum GR.26-27.1982. Preserved
Corinth with the Italian settlers after the establish- heights 56mm, 50mm. For the pose, cf. loosely the
ment of the Roman colony there in 44 BC. satyr, Talamo 1987-8, 52,figs.56-8.
8 22
The carvings from a couch of Letta's second Nicholls 1979, 23; Letta 1984, 85-6; Talamo
class (see below) in the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1987-8, 28-9, 41-53, figs. i6a-b, 32-60. Free-
shown to the author by Dr Jiri Frel in 1979. standing leg-sculptures (e.g. on the Cambridge
9
von Bothmer 1990, 248-9, no. 181 (includes couch) are differently built up, around a tall,
profile/u/crum medallions of Cupid, somewhat like narrow, central member of square section.
those of the Cambridge couch, and part of a leg 23
e.g. P a s q u i 1890, pis. 1,2.1; L e t t a 1984, n o . 9 7 .
sculpture in the form of a sphinx). 24
10
In some cases the upward taper of the relief-
Annual Report Virginia Museum of Fine Arts ground pieces behind the Cupids might seem to
(1984-5), 11 (with figs.), 16. Restoration proceeding. favour their location on the bell-shaped members,
11
Letta 1984, 92-4. Against the author's sugges- e.g. Letta 1984, nos. 35, 84 (where earlier biblio-
tion that some of them may have had an anterior graphy), Talamo 1987-8, figs. 109-10, 114.
25
sacred role in the home, it is argued that they were Backs abraded for gluing, either completely
exclusively funerary in use, ibid., 90-2, 94; but, in flat or with slight central cavity where cut has
the provinces, some of the original Italian products broken into pithy interior of bone; pegging on four
44 THE ANTIQUARIES JOURNAL
38
examples (cf. attachment of frame-panel ornament e.g. the Victory described above and Talamo
on Cambridge couch). 1987-8, figs. 48-51.
26 39
Certainty is not possible with the top and All Wellcome no. A 50409. Stevens Catalogue,
right parts of the groups missing; if so, they had 1 September 1925, lot 344.
40
underlying laminations like the Cambridge Fitzwilliam Museum GR.3-9.1982. Height of
Apollos. friezes c. 118 and 123mm (variation may be
27
Talamo 1987-8, 70-2, figs. 99-102. deliberate; leg-sculptures of Cambridge couch
28
Andronicos 1984, 123-36, figs. 75-90. apparently 65mm higher at head than foot end).
29 Some of lesser unillustrated fragments, GR. loa-e.
Richter 1966, 60, figs. 324-5; Adriani 1963,
135, fig. 207 on pi. 59. These are admittedly on flat- 1982, may also belong here.
41
leg couches, but the bone furniture often had a Fitzwilliam Museum GR.i 1-12.1982. True
similarly tall frame. vertical height of each 32mm.
30 42
Dawid and Dawid 1972-5, figs. 8-14; Barnett Fitzwilliam Museum GR.14.1982. Height
1982, 70, pi. 72; Akurgal 1987, 145, pi. 56. 64mm.
31 43
A wide range of Cupid activities is emerging on Fitzwilliam Museum GR. 13.1982. Height
these couches, perhaps even the nest of Cupids: 96mm.
44
Letta 1984, nos. 40-1 (nest interpreted as boat), Fitzwilliam Museum GR. 15.1982. Unillus-
Talamo 1987-8, fig. 112. trated. Estimated original diameter c. 150mm.
32 45
Fitzwilliam Museum GR.2.1983. Height Graeven 1903, 59-64, pis. 38-40.
46
37'5 m m - Fitzwilliam Museum GR.16.1982. Height
33 39mm.
Wellcome nos. A 65945, A 65947. Acquired
47
with the Bacchus described below in lot 349, Fitzwilliam Museum GR.42.1982. Height
Sotheby Catalogue, 12 November 1928. 97mm. Wellcome no. A 65944. On source, see
34 above (note 33).
Fitzwilliam Museum GR.31.1982. Preserved
48
height 75mm. Nicholls 1979, 26-7. Most recently published,
35
Fitzwilliam Museum GR.33.1982. Preserved the child-Mercury/Cupid of the Esquiline couch,
height 54mm. Although much shallower, apparently Talamo 1987-8, 55-7, figs. 61, 63-8.
49
also flat-backed and once with an underlying Leg-sculptures: e.g. eagles on Tomb of
lamination down the middle, like the men with Volumnii cineraria. Couch with lion masks: Korte
Cupids above (?). 1916, 159, pi. 109.5.
36 50
e.g. Letta 1984, nos. 34, 43; Talamo 1987-8, Letta 1984, 92-3.
51
80, figs. 108, 116, lower centre. Talamo 1987-8, 82-3, 90-2.
37 52
Letta 1984, 87-90, 101-7. Cf. Talamo 1987-8, Richter 1966, 105-6, figs. 520, 531; Nicholls
76-80. 1979, no. 17; Letta 1984, nos. 69, 116.

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DQUMEYROU, E. 1989. 'An ivory fulcrum medallion', Getty Mus.J., 17, 5-14
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GRAEVEN, H. 1903. Antike Schnitzereien ausElfenbeinundKnochen inphotographischerNachbildung, 1, Hanover
KORTE, G. 1916. Rilievi delle urne etrusche, HI, Berlin
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Museum', Archaeological Reportsfor igjo-yi, 77-85
, 1979. 'A Roman couch in Cambridge', Archaeologia, 106, 1-32
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