A number of pieces in the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery collection have been donated to us by private collectors. These ox horns from Italy were presented to us by Estella Canziani (1887-1964) in the 1930s, along with a major collection of water colours, tempera paintings, sketchbooks, costumes, ceramics, archive material, and jewellery.Estella and her mother, Louisa Starr Canziani (1845-1909), were both artists who frequently travelled around Europe. The anthropological approach that Estella brought to her painting and collecting established one of the most extensive insights into traditional rural life, and the role of the traveller at a turning point in the early twentieth century.The peasants in the village of San Stefano brought their possessions into the archiprete’s (priest’s) house for Estella to choose from, including carpets, terra-cotta, brass, coins, plates, woodwork and jewellery. She bought many things, including these horns, which were intended to protect the household:’In nearly every house, either over one of the doors, or on a shelf, or above the large open fireplace, there are the horns of oxen, – (the black ones are the best), – or the half-decayed body of a falcon or owl, to keep away the evil eye.’ |
