A GROUP OF DERGE FITTINGS AND PENDANTS AND A PEN... Lot 25

A GROUP OF DERGE FITTINGS AND PENDANTS AND A PEN CONTAINER Tibet, ca. 15th - 17th c. L. 9,5; 39 and 31,8 cm Old German private collection, by repute acquired in Asia in the 1960s, sold from his collection at Nagel, 30.10.2009, lot 1270 This delicate and intricately fashioned crupper pendant is a superb example of pierced and chiseled ironwork, an art form that reached unparalleled excellence in Tibet during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The crupper is an integral part of tack, a collective term for horse equipment such as a saddle, girth, stirrups, bridle, reins, and breastcollar. Tack adorned in elaborate and imaginative ways, often with precious materials, occurs in virtually all cultures that valued horses, including Tibet. Crupper straps extend from the back of a saddle over a horse's hindquarters, or croup, and loop around the base of its tail to keep the saddle from slipping forward. One pendant hangs from the straps on each side, resting on the horse's hindquarters between its hip and its thigh. Their function is simply to enrich the animal's overall appearance. Complex and highly decorated crupper pendants such as these appear only on the most lavish sets of Tibetan horse equipment. For a similar pair of derge crupper pendants dated by Radiocarbon testing of the wood to the 14th c. preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, see the purchase 2016, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Gift (2016.316.1, 2.)- Wear, one fitting lost, the pen container with wear, the gilt-bronze fittings mounted on a stand