{"product_id":"vintage-cast-brass-openwork-bird-and-scroll-trivet-c-1950-1980","title":"Antique Cast Brass Openwork Bird and Scroll Trivet, c. 1900–1940","description":"\u003ch3\u003eThe Piece\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA cast brass trivet, pierced right through, with two stylised birds turning towards each other inside a wreath of scrolling tendrils.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe birds are the whole reason to look at it. Each is drawn as a single flat plane with no modelling at all, a plump breast, a small triangular beak and one incised ring for an eye, and out of each body sweeps a long wing that stops being a wing halfway along and becomes a scroll. They face one another across the centre with their beaks almost touching.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEverything else is spirals. Volutes and C scrolls fill the field between and beneath the birds, curling back on themselves so that the open ground and the metal carry roughly equal weight, which is what stops a pierced design of this density from reading as clutter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA broad plain rim runs round the outside, flat on top and unornamented, and it does the same job a mount does on a print. Three small peened heads sit flush in that rim where the feet are riveted through from below.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe finish has worn the way old gilded brass does. The raised faces of the birds and the scrolls are rubbed to a warm bright gold where hands and cloths have reached them, while the recesses and the undercuts hold a dark near black deposit, and across parts of the surface the gilding has broken up and the metal beneath has gone granular.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003eHistory \u0026amp; Provenance\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt is cast in a single piece. The design, the scrollwork and the outer rim are continuous metal with no joins, the edges of the piercing carry the slight taper that a pattern needs to draw from a mould, and the recessed ground has the fine granular texture of a sand cast surface rather than the smoothness of a stamping.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe feet are separate and riveted through the rim. That matters for dating. A later decorative trivet has its feet cast integral with the body because it is cheaper, and separately made feet peened through from below is the older and more laborious way of doing it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe drawing is Art Nouveau rather than after it. The bird reduced to a flat silhouette, the wing that dissolves into a whiplash scroll, the circular field filled edge to edge and the refusal of any modelling or shading are the vocabulary as it was actually drawn around the turn of the twentieth century, and behind it sits the Celtic revival that fed the same movement. Later foundries quoting the style tend to soften it, add relief and tidy the asymmetry, and none of that has happened here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe surface supports the same reading. The gilding is worn through to bare metal on every raised face and has broken up rather than simply dulled, and the dark deposit in the undercuts is hard and layered. That is long handling, not storage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo maker's mark is present on the face. Cast brass trivets are conventionally marked on the reverse rather than the front, so the absence here says only that the front is unmarked. An absence of that kind sets an outer limit rather than a starting point.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003eProduct Details\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003ctable\u003e\n  \u003ctbody\u003e\n    \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eEra\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003ec. 1900–1940. Dated from construction, design and finish rather than documentation. Sand cast in one piece with drafted piercing, and feet made separately and riveted through the rim rather than cast integral, which is the older and more costly method. The two bird and scroll drawing is Art Nouveau as the movement actually drew it, flat and unmodelled, rather than a later softened revival of it. The gilding is worn through to bare metal on the raised faces and broken up rather than dulled. No mark is present on the face, and that absence gives an outer limit only\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n    \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eMaker\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eUnattributed. No mark on the face\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n    \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eForm\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eCircular pierced trivet with a broad plain rim, raised on three riveted feet\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n    \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eMaterial\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eCast brass with a worn gilt finish\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n    \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eDecoration\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eTwo stylised birds in flight facing one another, each with an incised ring eye and a wing drawn out into a scroll, set in a pierced ground of volutes and C scrolls within a plain rim\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n    \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eMarks\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eNone found on the face\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n    \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eDimensions\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eApproximately 8 in. diameter by 0.75 in. high on its feet\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n    \u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eCondition\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eVery good. Sound and heavy with no cracks, bends or losses to the piercing. All three feet present and tight. Gilding worn through to bare metal on the raised faces with hard dark deposit in the recesses and granular surface where the finish has broken up, consistent with long handling. Offered uncleaned. The green marble slab shown in the photographs is a display surface and is not included\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n  \u003c\/tbody\u003e\n\u003c\/table\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003eWhy It Belongs in Your Home\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA trivet is one of the few decorative objects that still has a job. This one takes a teapot, a casserole or a hot pan off a finished table, and it is heavy enough and flat enough to do it without sliding.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt also works with nothing on it at all, which is the harder test. Pierced metal on a dark wood table reads as a piece of drawing rather than as a utensil, and the open ground means it picks up the colour of whatever it sits on.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe birds do the selling. Two of them, facing, beaks nearly touching, is a quietly affectionate image and people respond to it before they work out what the object is for. It hangs as well as it sits, and on a kitchen wall or a plate rail it holds its own against much larger things.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWarm gold against green stone, dark oak, white plaster or a painted wall is an easy combination, and brass at this scale is the kind of small piece that finishes a shelf rather than crowding it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Viridian Eclection","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67558803079273,"sku":"VE-1768","price":324.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0651\/0093\/9369\/files\/01_d3844cdd-b40f-4e56-9f0e-5f83f19e0fb1.jpg?v=1790592794","url":"https:\/\/viridianeclection.com\/products\/vintage-cast-brass-openwork-bird-and-scroll-trivet-c-1950-1980","provider":"Viridian Eclection","version":"1.0","type":"link"}