Over the Top Contemporary Objets de Vertu

摘要

The term objets de vertu connotes a category of the decorative arts comprised of small items made from precious materials-gold, silver, gemstones and enamel, but also ivory, quartz crystal, amber and other natural substances-and executed with a high degree of skill. (Vertu is from the Latin, meaning excellence and having artistic quality.) Almost always, such objects, which can date from antiquity but whose pinnacle was reached, arguably, in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, have a purported use-as snuff boxes, caskets, ewers, loving cups and the like. However their true raison d'etre is to demonstrate the virtuosity of the jeweler/goldsmith while reflecting and honoring the wealth and status of the owner, or in the case of devotional objects, such as jewel-encrusted medieval chalices and reliquaries, the glory of god.1 Whether on an earthly or heavenly level, objets de vertu could be said to have a function beyond conventional concepts of luxury.