Object: Powder flask with Samson and the Lion

Title:

Powder flask with Samson and the Lion

Object name(s):

Powder flask

Brief description:

Powder flask made of carved stag horn, the terminal pieces having become detached, decorated with a scene depicting Samson killing the lion, with a cityscape behind. Inscribed.

Collection:

Victoria and Albert Museum

Associated concept:

Arms & Armour

Associated concept:

Metalwork

Associated concept:

Tools & Equipment

Associated concept:

Accessories

Associated concept:

Sculpture

Associated concept:

Enslavement

Associated person:

Bernal, Ralph

Content - concept:

lion

Content - concept:

flask

Content - concept:

cityscape

Content - person:

Samson

Current reproduction location:

https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2007BM3486/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg

Location type:

Thumbnail

Dimension:

Height

Dimension measurement unit:

cm

Dimension value:

17

Inscription content:

'FORCE.1574.SANSON'

Inscription interpretation:

at the top;

Material:

staghorn

Material:

metal

Object history note:

The horn is likely to be French because of the spelling of the name 'Sanson'. Analogous works are in the Louvre, Paris. Bought from the Bernal Collection at Christie's, London, 28 March 1855, lot 2520. Provenance Ralph Bernal (1783-1854) was a renowned collector and objects from his collection are now in museums across the world, including the V&A. He was born into a Sephardic Jewish family of Spanish descent, but was baptised into the Christian religion at the age of 22. Bernal studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, and subsequently became a prominent Whig politician. He built a reputation for himself as a man of taste and culture through the collection he amassed and later in life he became the president of the British Archaeological Society. Yet the main source of income which enabled him to do this was the profits from enslaved labour. In 1811, Bernal inherited three sugar plantations in Jamaica, where over 500 people were eventually enslaved. Almost immediately, he began collecting works of art and antiquities. After the emancipation of those enslaved in the British Caribbean in the 1830s, made possible in part by acts of their own resistance, Bernal was awarded compensation of more than £11,450 (equivalent to over £1.5 million today). This was for the loss of 564 people enslaved on Bernal's estates who were classed by the British government as his 'property'. They included people like Antora, and her son Edward, who in August 1834 was around five years old (The National Archives, T 71/49). Receiving the money appears to have led to an escalation of Bernal's collecting. When Bernal died in 1855, he was celebrated for 'the perfection of his taste, as well as the extent of his knowledge' (Christie and Manson, 1855). His collection was dispersed in a major auction during which the Museum of Ornamental Art at Marlborough House, which later became the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A), was the biggest single buyer.

Object name:

Powder flask

Object number:

2233-1855

Object production date:

1574

Date - association:

dated

Date - earliest / single:

1574-01-01

Date - latest:

1574-12-31

Object production person:

Unknown

Object production place:

France

Place association:

made

Physical description:

Powder flask made of carved stag horn, the terminal pieces having become detached, decorated with a scene depicting Samson killing the lion, with a cityscape behind. Inscribed.

Reproduction number:

2007BM3486

Reproduction number:

2007BM3487

Reproduction number:

2013GD0133

Reproduction number:

2017KB2026

Responsible department/section:

MET

Technique:

Carved stag horn with metal mounts

Text:

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O102279/

Text reason:

Collections online record

Text:

This powder flask is made of carved staghorn with metal mounts and is made by an unknown artist in France in 1574. The flask is decorated with a scene depicting Samson killing the lion. Powder flasks or horns are portable containers of wood, horn, metal, leather or ceramic used to hold the priming powder or gunpowder for firearms. They normally terminated in a metal nozzle which also served as a powder measure, closed by a plug or spring cap, and are often highly decorated. Gunpowder began to be transported in pouches or more rigid containers at about the same date as the introduction of hand-held firearms in the fifteenth century. Such flask might have a military purpose, or be used for hunting. The very decorative pieces were above all a singn of rank, and at the same time aesthetic objects in their own right, and probably never actually functioned as containers for gunpowder.

Text reason:

Summary description

User's reference:

Reference:

Maskell, W. A Description of the Ivories Ancient and Medieval in the South Kensington Museum, London, 1872

Reference:

Trusted, Marjorie, Baroque & Later Ivories, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 2013

Reference:

Christie and Manson, Catalogue of the Celebrated Collection of Works of Art, from the Byzantine Period to that of Louis Seize, of that Distinguished Collector, Ralph Bernal (London, 1855)

Reference:

The National Archives of the UK (TNA): Slave Registers: Jamaica: St. Ann. (1) Indexed, 1832, T 71/49

Reference:

Hannah Young, ''The perfection of his taste': Ralph Bernal, collecting and slave-ownership in 19th-century Britain', Cultural and Social History, 19:1 (2022), pp. 19-37

User's reference:

Reference:

Inventory of Art Objects Acquired in the Year 1855. In: Inventory of the Objects in the Art Division of the Museum at South Kensington, Arranged According to the Dates of their Acquisition. Vol I. London: Printed by George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode for H.M.S.O., 1868, p. 94

User's reference:

Reference:

Longhurst, Margaret H. Catalogue of Carvings in Ivory. Part II. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1929, p. 71

User's reference:

Reference details:

p. 8

User's reference:

Reference details:

p. 397

Persistent shareable link for this record: https://museumdata.uk/objects/fc3fe10d-221a-3d86-a493-36b3cf87e768

Use licence for this record: CC BY-NC

Attribution for this record: https://museumdata.uk/objects/fc3fe10d-221a-3d86-a493-36b3cf87e768, Victoria and Albert Museum, CC BY-NC

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