ivory bronze figure

This statue of a little girl is made from a combination of carved ivory and gilded cast bronze, known as 'chryselephantine'. Statues like these first became popular in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, because the Belgian annexation of the Congo had resulted in a huge increase in the amount of ivory available.

The fashion for delicate chryselephantine sculptures continued through the 1920s-30s, and slender, elegantly posed dancers were especially popular. Ferdinand Preiss, one of the best-known sculptors of the Art Deco period, specialised in this type of figure. Based in Berlin, his work was exported worldwide.

Many European countries took part in the so-called 'scramble' to colonise Africa in the late nineteenth century. The King of the Belgians, Leopold (1835-1909), took Congo for his personal possession in 1884. He exploited the country ruthlessly for its resources, particularly elephant ivory and rubber.

It is particularly ironic that these Art Deco statues, which were mostly of beautiful women or winsome children, like this one, were in fact only possible because of aggressive colonisation and exploitation of both people, animals and natural resources. This is the only example in our collections of this type of statue. They were usually a feature of European rather than British sculpture.