Chinese? bronze cat

This eye-catching bronze box in the form of a cat, with a kitten on her back for the lid, has a timeless charm. When modelling the realistically arched pose of the kitten, the unknown sculptor had clearly studied cats closely from life. They may even have been using their own cat as a model.

Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery was given this box as part of a collection of 95 small cat models and sculptures. The donors, Blanche Langton and her husband, Henry, were great cat lovers and wrote a book on The Cat in Ancient Egypt, published in 1940. This was clearly the main focus of their interest. They left most of their Egyptian cat collection to the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at London University, but their other cats, in many different media and from many parts of the world, were given to us.