
Siobhan Quin
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Sold for £1,536 inc. premium
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Provenance:
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's London, Antiquities, 14-15 December 1981, lot 206.
The property of an American private collector, acquired at the above sale.
From the late 6th Century B.C. strings of amber beads were found in the tombs of wealthy women in Magna Graecia. From the 5th Century B.C., finds of amber pendants and figures occur in Etruria. Such head beads are carved in the archaic style. The exaggerated large eye of the above lot may have had apotropaic powers to see and ward off evil. There is another Etruscan amber profile head pendant of similar proportions, dated circa 525–480 B.C. in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, no. 83.AO.202.1.