In the 1920s and 30s, the elephant charged through French decorative arts. The Paris colonial exhibitions had turned every drawing room's imagination toward Africa and Asia, and the animal sculptors of the day answered with elephants — trunk raised, ears spread, caught mid-stride on slabs of marble. As bookends they were a small theatre for the shelf: two animals forever advancing toward each other, with a row of books holding them apart.
This pair is in the French Art Deco taste, and by style and materials we place it in the 1920s or 1930s — an informed estimate, as the pair is unsigned and no maker is recorded. Each elephant is modelled mid-stride with trunk raised, in patinated metal with a deep green-brown surface, mounted on a thick rectangular plinth of rose-grey veined marble with canted corners. Look at where the patina has rubbed to a lighter tone — the trunk, the ears, the ridge of the back — because on a piece handled for decades the wear falls exactly on the high points a hand or a cloth reaches first, a pattern no artificial ageing gets quite right. Raised-trunk elephants of this school remain among the most sought-after Deco bookend subjects.
Both figures are sound and both plinths sit flat, with light, honest rubbing to the patina's high points and minor wear to the marble edges, as the photographs show. Whoever shelved their books between these elephants before you kept them well. They are ready for a library shelf, a desk, or a mantel.
The pair is around ninety years old by our estimate, in metal and marble. It arrives professionally packed and fully insured — we handle the paperwork and worldwide shipping, with all import duties paid by us, so there is nothing to settle on delivery. Returns are accepted within 30 days.
DETAILS:
Each bookend: approx. 23 × 9 × 17.5 cm (9.1 × 3.5 × 6.9 in) — each roughly the footprint of a hardcover book
Patinated metal figures on veined marble plinth bases
Sold as a pair.
Condition: good condition for age; even patina with honest rubbing to high points, minor wear to marble edges
