Antique French Art Deco Horse Head BookendsSigned M. Leducq, Green Patina on Black Marble — France, circa 1930

DETAILS:
Size: each — Height 13 cm (5.1 in) · Base 13 × 7.5 cm (5.1 × 3 in)
Material: green-patinated régule figures; original gilt brass bridle; black marble bases
Style/Period: French Art Deco, circa 1930 — signed M. Leducq
Shipping: professionally packed, fully insured, worldwide
Condition: good; green patina consistent across both figures; original brass bridles present; light wear and minor defects as photographed; marble bases sound
Returns: accepted within 30 days

The Art Deco period brought the horse's head into the drawing room with a new kind of confidence. Where the nineteenth century had favoured the full animal — galloping, rearing, in full animalier drama — the Deco sculptors understood that the head alone, severed cleanly at the neck and mounted on a plain base, carried more presence than the whole. It was a lesson learned from antiquity: the Greek horse-head fragments in the great museums of Europe had been influencing French sculptors since the eighteenth century, and by the 1920s and 1930s the type had become one of the defining objects of the modernist interior — poised, reduced, unsentimentally beautiful.

This pair is French, circa 1930, signed M. Leducq, each bookend modelled as a horse's head in green-patinated régule, the bridle picked out in original gilt brass — a thin, precisely bent rod that runs from the bit ring at the mouth back along the cheek, the contrast between the warm gold metal and the cool verdigris green of the patina doing the work that elaborate modelling does in heavier pieces. The heads face inward, toward each other and toward the books they hold, the composition that makes a pair of bookends work as a unified object. The modelling of the face is confident and economical: the eye socket deep and clearly defined, the nostril flared, the ears pricked forward — the alert horse rather than the passive one — and the mane indicated by close parallel incised lines along the crest rather than individually carved strands, the restraint of a sculptor who understood his scale. Each head sits on a rectangular black marble plinth.

Whoever shelved their books between these horses before you kept both pieces together with their original bridle details intact. The green patina is consistent and attractive across both figures, deeper in the recesses of the modelling and brighter on the cheekbones and crest — the natural variation that builds over decades and cannot be replicated on a new casting. The marble bases are sound and sit flat; some light wear is present as noted and photographed. They are ready for a library shelf, a study, or a desk that deserves them.

They arrive professionally packed and fully insured. Returns are accepted within 30 days.

Condition

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A decorative style is not a guarantee of a particular maker or date. See the individual listing for the stated attribution and period.

Worldwide delivery is included in the price. Every piece is individually packed, tracked and fully insured. No shipping charge is added at checkout. If your destination is not listed, please contact us before ordering.

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Delivery information

Notify us within 30 days of delivery if you wish to return a piece. No reason is required. Returns are free within the Netherlands and Belgium; from elsewhere you pay return shipping for a change-of-mind return.

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