1920s Art Deco Erotic Reclining Nude Cigar Cutter Sculpture, Patinated Brass

Europe or North America, Art Deco period. A reclining nude cast in brass, her head thrown back into a froth of ruffled drapery, one arm flung wide and both legs scissored skyward to form the working jaws of a figural cigar cutter. The sculptor exploits the pose shamelessly: a blade ring encircles the thighs, so closing the legs trims the cigar, smoking-room wit of the sort marketed to gentlemen's clubs and private studies. Here the legs have been pinned in position, so the mechanism no longer operates and the piece reads purely as sculpture. Modeling is confident throughout, from the pleated cushion and curled coiffure to the rounded musculature of the torso, and the warm surface carries a mellow variegated patina. The figure is mounted on a stepped black stone plinth, likely marble or a marble-look composite, and comes with a custom display stand. Erotic figural smoking accessories occupy a curious niche in early twentieth-century decorative arts. Descended from the cold-painted "Vienna bronzes" of the Bergman workshop and its imitators, which hid nudes inside folding lamps, inkwells, and bell-push figures, the type migrated readily into the tobacco trade, where cutters, ashtrays, and match strikers offered the same private joke in a form a man could keep on his desk. The mechanical conceit here, a pair of legs doubling as shears, belongs to a small family of designs in which the erotic pose and the tool's action are deliberately conflated. Such pieces circulated unsigned on both sides of the Atlantic and were recast well past the Deco decades, so alloy composition, weight, and the crispness of the mold seams carry more evidential weight than any foundry tradition. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 205128

Estimate:£523.26

View all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorSculptures