Figural Inkwell, Gnome Inkwell on Engraved Dish, Patinated Metal Desk Stand — French Style, 19th Century Attribution

The nineteenth-century desk was a stage for small sculpture, and no object gave the sculptor more licence than the inkwell. Ink needed a lidded vessel; the century's makers decided the lid might as well be a character — and desks across Europe acquired owls, monkeys, jesters, and gnomes whose heads tipped back each time a pen was dipped. The joke had a purpose: an inkwell handled twenty times a day earns its keep better as a companion than as a jar.

This inkwell is attributed to the nineteenth century, in patinated metal: a bearded gnome in a soft cap, wide-eared and solemn, his robe falling in cast folds to form the well itself, standing at the centre of a broad circular dish engraved edge to edge with scrolling arabesque ornament — the dish serving as the pen tray and catch for drips. The head is the lid: it tips back on its hinge to open the ink reservoir within, which the piece retains. Look at the face under a raking light — the brow, the drooping moustache, the individual strands of the beard are all worked with the modeller's full attention, character-making of a kind that mass production never spent on a desk object. The patina is deep and unpolished, pooling dark in the engraving.

The metal is sound, the hinge works, and the surface carries its unrestored age evenly, as the photographs show. Whoever dipped their pen under this gnome's gaze before you kept him at work. He belongs on a desk, a library shelf, or in a cabinet of small curiosities.

The inkwell is solid metal with its original reservoir, twenty centimetres across the dish. 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:
Dish diameter: 20 cm (7.9 in) · Height: 13.5 cm (5.3 in) — the footprint of a dessert plate
Patinated metal; hinged head lid; engraved dish; ink reservoir present
Condition: good condition for age; deep unpolished patina, working hinge, sound throughout

Condition details available on request.

Electrical details available on request.

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Provenance details available on request.