🎨⏳📜Nautilus Cup, Chicago Art Institute
During the Age of Discovery, European artists were inspired by the exotic materials suddenly available to them. Goldsmiths seized on the opportunity to include wondrous and seemingly magical materials -
-including coconuts, ivory, ostrich eggs, and, in this case, a nautilus shell from the Indian Ocean - into works of art that celebrated both nature and artifice. These types of objects were also popular with collectors during the 19th c, when the mounts on this cup were reworked.
📖📚⏳🕯✨🎨 Thumbelina is a literary fairy tale written by Hans Christian Anderson.
An adventure story from the feminine point of view with its moral being people are happiest with their own kind. They point out that Thumbelina is a passive character, the victim of ...
...circumstances; whereas her male counterpart Tom Thumb (one of the tale's inspirations) is an active character, makes himself felt, and exerts himself.
Danish critics were not enthusiastic.
Hans Christian Andersen in 1836
The informal, chatty style of the tales and their lack of morals were considered inappropriate in children's literature.
Thumbelina, Illustration by Vilhelm Pedersen,
Andersen's first illustrator #fairytales