Buccellati 925 Sterling Silver Rhinoceros Rhino 925 Figurine ITALY Handmade

This Buccellati sterling silver rhinoceros figurine is a hand-chased Italian sculpture rendered with the hide, folds, and armor plating of the animal worked directly into the metal. The heavy skin folds break across the shoulder and haunch exactly as they do on a real rhino, chased line by line rather than cast smooth, and the sculpture is finished with a contrast of high polish on the raised planes against darkened recesses so the texture reads from across a room. The face is where the work shows: the eye is modeled with a ringed lid, the ears turn independently, the nostril and mouth are cut with real anatomy, and both horns rise with the slight asymmetry of the living animal rather than the symmetry of a mold. The underside is open, stamped STERLING, Buccellati, and ITALY.

This is the top of the market, full stop. Buccellati has been the standard for Italian silver since Mario Buccellati took over his Milan workshop in 1919 and opened on the Via degli Orefici, the goldsmiths' street; his work sold out completely at his first exhibition the following year and he was known in his lifetime as the Prince of Goldsmiths. The house is now part of the Richemont group alongside Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, and its hand-chased silver animals are among the most collected objects it has ever produced. The rhinoceros is one of the harder subjects in the menagerie to find. Everything about this piece, the weight, the depth of the chasing, the crispness of the signature, is what separates a Buccellati from every decorative silver animal that has tried to imitate one.

An object like this is not display filler. It anchors a desk, a shelf, or a case, and it holds its value the way very few silver objects do.

Details:
Metal: Sterling silver
Hallmarks: STERLING, Buccellati, ITALY
Maker: Buccellati, Italy
Subject: Rhinoceros
Construction: Hand-chased sculpture with open underside
Condition: Excellent estate condition

Fun Facts:
Buccellati's silver animals descend from a Renaissance workshop tradition Mario Buccellati deliberately revived, chasing each hide, feather, and scale by hand with punches rather than casting the texture, which is why no two pieces in the menagerie are ever quite identical.
Europe's image of the rhinoceros was set in 1515 by Albrecht Dürer, who carved a woodcut of one he had never seen, working only from a written description and a sketch; he gave it plated armor and riveted seams, and that armored reading of the animal persisted in European art for the next three centuries.