It’s #WorldAnteaterDay so here’s Salvador Dali’s (1904-1989) anteater bookplate design c. 1930 for friend & Surrealist movement founder André Breton (1896-1966), whose nickname became “le tamanoir.” Bonus photo of Dali walking a Giant Anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) in Paris in 1969.
Happy #WorldAnteaterDay!
From House of Fabergé menagerie, here is a diamond-eyed jasper anteater figure purchased by The Walters Art Museum founder Henry Walters on a trip to St. Petersburg in 1900. Now in the museum’s permanent collection.
Anteater
House of Fabergé (Russian, est. 1842) (Manufacturer)
Peter Carl Fabergé (1846-1920)
c. 1900
jasper, diamonds
"This tiny diamond-eyed anteater was purchased by Henry Walters, founder of the Walters Art Museum, on a trip to St. Petersburg in 1900. The House of Fabergé began making hardstone animals in the 1890s and they proved popular with their elite clients. Queen Alexandra (wife of the British King Edward VIl) built a large collection, and production peaked in the years immediately before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.
Objects such as this anteater were inspired by Japanese netsuke. Carl Fabergé owned over 500 of these. He married this admiration of Asian art with the rich Russian tradition of hardstone carving. The anteater is unusual among Fabergé's menagerie, although examples in bloodstone and quartz are also known.”
