Unusual Artifacts: A Furniture Mount of Cast Brass

Brass Mount
Nineteenth Century
The Victoria & Albert Museum

This pretty, little head is one of a collection nearly seven hundred decorative brass furniture mounts, mostly dating from the 19th century, which were, in 2001, given to the V&A by the brass-founders, Cope & Timmins.
Though it’s impossible to tell exactly when most of the mounts were made, we do know that many of the mounts, including the example pictured here, are in styles that date from the late Eighteenth Century. Mounts such as this one were a constant part of the manufacturer's stock as styles would come into and fall out of fashion.

This particular mount in the neoclassical style takes the form of a female head with a stylized diadem,. If I had to guess, I’d say she was a depiction of the Roman goddess Diana (presuming that her diadem is meant to be a crescent moon).

The firm of Cope & Timmins was established after 1900 and amassed the inventories of two much older companies, Cope & Collinson (based in London since at least the 1840s) and Clarke & Timmins (who had offices in London and Birmingham in the Nineteenth century).