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THBDamascene Steel and Gold
About Seller
125 West Market Street
Johnson City, TN 37604
United States
Family-owned and family-run Johnson City Tennessee auction business for 25 years. Selling antiques and collectables for 38 years. Kimball M. Sterling, Inc. was founded and is owned by Kimball and Victoria Sterling, time and again, they have laid solid claim to world-wide attention and renown with an...Read more
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| $500 | $50 |
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About Auction
LiveJan 3, 2026
Masterpiece Cane auction is all from a Europeon collection. We offer items from this private collection about once a year, Kimball Sterling kimballsterling@earthlink.net
View Full Catalog (89)
- Lot Description
Ca. 1890
Milord steel knob, precisely tooled and black-oxidized, in a stretched, stylish, facetted octagonal configuration, extending to a round, shield-like top embellished with gold inlay.
Centered by the classic chimera in a square panel drawing out four beautiful foliate swags with fleur-de-lys-like tips alternating with diamond-shaped Renaissance elements, the yellow gold damascene is more and above highlighted with fine engraving and trailing microdot chasing. The artistic bravura and technical virtuosity manifested here are breathtaking.
Made to different standards and styles, the knob exudes quiet, classy elegance and offers the essential mix of rarity, quality, and excellent initial condition.
It is graced by the most magnificent, throughout regularly figured and richly hued snake wood shaft and a long horn ferrule. Notably, that snake wood is the most opulent and exuberant of all woods. The timber's stunning beauty has been further enhanced here by meticulous attention to surface treatment. The king of all woods, snake wood, elevates every cane to new heights.
Old-world refinement is apparent in the profile of this cane, which is literally fine art at hand.
Damascening, an art form with over a thousand years of history, is the art of decorating steel objects with designs in gold and silver, resulting in beautiful embellishments. As its name suggests, damascene originated in Damascus, Syria, and was created and exported by ancient artisans.
The preservation of damascening in Spain was almost entirely due to the genius of a single family, the Zuloagas. The town of Eibar, remote in the mountains of the Basque Country, became, through its efforts, the center of European damascening in the 19th century. Notably, the impact of the Zuloagas was, for a brief period, even greater in England than in Spain itself.
The Victorians’ fascination with techniques, their reverence for the crafts as well as the art and architecture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and above all, their passion for holding industrial art exhibitions, provided quite exceptional conditions for craftsmen, who were able to develop and display their skills in a way that had hitherto been readily available to painters and sculptors.
Preeminent among such craftsmen in contemporary eyes were the art-metalworkers who produced decorative objects, usually in pseudo-medieval or Renaissance style,
in both precious and base metals, and leading among these were the virtuoso exponents of embossed and chiseled ornament with whom the Zuloagas are to be ranked, though they are now best known for their gold and silver damascened work on iron.
H. 2” x 1 ½”, O.L. 34 ¾”
$600-$800
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