Description
Professor Thibault collected insects the way other men collected stamps, and when he traveled he packed his specimens in a white steamer trunk. In the tale we like to imagine for this box, one stormy October night the latch slipped, and his beetles escaped to crawl across the lid in tidy black rows. The professor, by all accounts, simply laughed and declared the escape an improvement on his own design.
This white trunk wears the aftermath: detailed black bugs marching over its pale surface, at once elegant and gloriously eerie. It is a natural for Halloween, of course, but it also suits a naturalist’s desk or a cabinet of curiosities any time of year. Give it to the friend who reads Edgar Allan Poe by candlelight, the gardener who names the beetles in her flowerbeds, or the collector who always prefers the strange to the sweet.
At a glance
- Modeled as a miniature white trunk
- Finely detailed black insect illustrations scattered over the surface
- Holds a few trinkets or a piece of jewelry
- Painted by hand on French porcelain in Limoges
- A bold contrast of crisp white and inky black
- Insects drawn with careful precision, legs and wings neatly picked out
- A delightfully unusual piece among more conventional florals in a collection
Spooky, clever and impossible to overlook on a shelf. Bring it out each October alongside the pumpkins, or leave it on display all year for those who love a little mystery.
