Exotic pipe case

Dutch colonial, India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) or Batavia, ca 1670

Provenance:
¥ New York, Professor Charles Rieger Collection
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Exotic pipe case

Dutch colonial, India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) or Batavia, ca 1670
Wood carved
Length ca 31 cm, width ca 6 cm, depth ca 3 cm
Provenance:
¥ Netherlands, private collection
¥ New York, Professor Charles Rieger Collection
Comparable object:
¥ Houston, Museum of Fine Art, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation,
Inv. No. BF.2014.5
References:
¥ G. Laue: Exotica, Munich 2012, p. 137, pp. 237Ð238, Cat. No. 38 pp. 140Ð141,
pp. 239Ð240, Cat. No. 43
¥ J. Veenendaal: Furniture from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India during the Dutch
Period, Delft 1985
¥ J. Veenendaal: Seventeenth Century Furniture from V.O.C. Settlements in Asia, in:
Arts of Asia 17 (1987), No. 1, pp. 116Ð124
Although this pipe case must be accorded autonomous artwork status because of its
sumptuously carved relief decoration, it is nonetheless a utilitarian object, albeit of a
showy character. It functioned as the exquisite case for a thin-stemmed Dutch clay pipe.
Figurative motifs are carved on all sides of the pipe case, some of them fully in the round
and pierced: a lion with open maw, naked men and women who are characterised as
ÔsavagesÕ by plumed headdresses. Yet the men are represented with moustaches. Some
of these ÔsavageÕ men and women are characterised as slaves by iron chains binding them
hand and foot. The ÔsavagesÕ also include Adam and Eve, who are recognisably depicted
beneath the Tree of Knowledge with the Serpent coiled around it above the point on
which the pipe case rests at its lower end. On the other side of the case a man decorated
with feathers is depicted playing a bagpipe.
The carved scenes on the pipe case refer both to the European idea of Ôthe savageÕ as the
wild man of the woods and the story of the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden.
Iconographic elements have been used that in Europe were associated with the exotic.
A tiara-shaped crown recurs on the pipe case; it may possibly have been integrated in
the composition as an heraldic element. If so, it might be an allusion to the person who
commissioned the pipe case. What is certain is that its first owner was from the
Netherlands. He may have been a merchant or trader who specialised in exotic luxury
goods.
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Fig. 1
Pipe case with savage warriors
Dutch colonial, India, Ceylon or Batavia, ca 1670
Wood (variegated ebony), carved, length 28.5 cm
Houston, Museum of Fine Arts,
Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Inv. No. BF.2014.5