Pietra Dura Butterfly Paperweight

This is a superb decorative antique Italian Grand Tour marble Pietra Dura mounted desk paperweight, circa 1880 in date. This splendid rectangular paperweight is exquisitely inlai...

This antique paperweight is unsigned, but presumed to have been acquired during a Grand Tour through Italy, and dating to approximately 1880 and do...

This is a superb decorative antique Italian Grand Tour marble Pietra Dura mounted desk paperweight, circa 1880 in date. This splendid rectangular paperweight is exquisitely inlaid with a sumptuous arrangement of semi-precious stones including malachite, agate, onyx and amethyst. It is beautifully inlaid on a slate base. Not only is this desk paperweight very functional, but it is also an exquisite mineralogical wonder that can be admired by all discerning collectors. Condition: In excellent condition, please see photos for confirmation, Dimensions in cm: Height 2 x Width 17 x Depth 10 Dimensions in inches: Height 1 inch x width 7 inches x depth 4 inches. Pietra dura is a term for the inlay technique of using cut and fitted, highly polished coloured stones to create images. It is considered a decorative art. Pietre dure is an Italian plural meaning "hard rocks" or hardstones; the singular pietra dura is also encountered in Italian. In Italian, but not in English, the term embraces all gem engraving and hardstone carving, which is the artistic carving of three-dimensional objects in semi-precious stone, normally from a single piece, for example in Chinese jade. The traditional convention in English has been to use the singular pietra dura just to denote multi-colored inlay work. However, in recent years there has been a trend to use pietre dure as a term for the same thing, but not for all of the techniques it covers, in Italian. But the title of a 2008 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure from the Palaces of Europe used the full Italian sense of the term, probably because they thought that it had greater brand recognition. The material on the website speaks of objects such as a vase in lapis lazuli as being examples of "hardstone carving (pietre dure)" The Victoria & Albert Museum in London uses both versions on its website, but uses pietra dura. "A method of inlaying coloured marbles or semi-precious stones into a stone base, often in geometric or flower patterns...." Giovanni Montelatici...

A fine signed Italian pietra dura paperweight. By Giuseppe Fiaschi. With handcut marble polychrome marble specimens inlaid on a stepped black...

A rare silvered metal desk or tabletop planter inlaid with 12 framed Pietra Dura panels of inlaid colorful flowers on a black base, complete with its ...

Carl Auböck Pipe Paperweight, Brass, Signed. Small scale meticulously detailed brass pipe paperweight by Viennese designer Carl Auböck.

Count Gleichen’s Russian shell paperweight, the tooth shaped fragment of a Russian armament shell set above another of rectangular form both raised on a silver mount on an ebonized rectangular plinth, applied with a plaque reading ‘Two fragments of a Russian shell fired at Mr Fred Burne assist.t paymaster and Mr Henry Crave St John midshipman of H.M.S. Cumberland in Aug.t 1854 from Tsee Fort Bonarsund whilst conveying refreshments to the English camp – for their messmate – H.S.H. Prince Victor of Hohenlohe Midshipman landed with the Naval Brigade in 1854’. With a framed caricature of Count Gleichen inscribed Vanity Fair, London, July 5, 1884. Vice Admiral H.S.H Count Gleichen – the Queen’s Nephew.Russian and English, 1854. The print has the following biography on the reverse and on the mount ‘His Serene Highness Prince Victor …. of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, is better known in England as Count Gleichen and as the Queen’s nephew. Born fifty years ago, he was sent to school at Dresden; but at the age of fourteen he conceived ideas not to be bounded within the confines of the small life of a German principality. So he ran away from school to go to sea, and his aunt the Queen of England, being informed of the fact, proposed to her sister to let her adventurous nephew become naturalised as an Englishman and enter the English Navy. This was accordingly done, and Prince Victor, as he was then called, was appointed to the Powerful on the Mediterranean Station, in 1848. He served in the Crimean War and in the operations in China he proved a popular officer and a good sailor-man, and was three times wounded in battle. In 1861 he married the daughter of Admiral Sir George Seymour, sister of the fifth Marquis of Hertford on which occasion it was that he put down his title of Prince and took up for future use that of Count. He became, in due course a Vice-Admiral, and in the meantime he also became a sculptor. It is in the latter art that he now mainly busies himself, and he has created many pleasing busts of his royal relatives and some works of greater pretensions than family portraits. An Alfred the Great, a Beaconsfield, and a Prince Imperial...

Sotheby's - New York: Important Paperweights - Sale No. 5349 - Saturday, June 15, 1985. Sotheby's Auction House, NY, June 1985. 1st Ed softcover. 393 lots photographed in color and b...

This is a clear crystal Lexus LS 400 car paperweight. Very nicely you can see through the crystal the inside details of the car, like the seats and the b...

Wonderful desk relic from a Bostonian Tailor.