Silver Statues

Many of the silver statues here stand on bases that set a scene. The leopard rests on a dark, wood-like branch; the Silver Running Wild Horses Statue gallops across a black base. A humpback whale swims with her calf over green sea waves, and a bald eagle dives toward the same green water, talons out. Together they form a small natural history in a single metal.

This is where a silver horse statue or a silver eagle statue earns its place on a sideboard: the base gives it a horizon and the silver gives it light. The same subjects continue in our Animal statues and Figurines collections, and in warmer tones on the Gold statues and Copper statues pages.

Salvador Dalí painted The Persistence of Memory, with its melting clocks, in 1931, and The Temptation of St. Anthony in 1946. In The Temptation of St. Anthony Statue by Salvador Dali, an elephant walks on impossibly long, thin legs carrying an obelisk; the melting clock drapes over its support, dark face and gold hands. Me and My Parrots, Frida - Low Relief sets a silver portrait into a dark stone slab.

Ancient Mexico runs through the rest. The Olmec of the Gulf coast, among the earliest Mesoamerican civilizations, carved the colossal heads; the Atlas of Tula is a tall Toltec warrior column, and the Aztec calendar becomes a silver disc on dark stone. The Silver Virgin of Guadalupe shows her green mantle within 24-karat gold solar rays, the image venerated at the Basilica of Tepeyac. Fruit bowls, candle holders and a Chanukah menorah carry the same silver into daily life.