Taglioni's Jewel Casket
Joseph Cornell
American, 1903–1972
1940
A small velvet-lined wooden box in which Joseph Cornell arranged glass cubes, chips, a bead necklace, and jewelry fragments as a miniature treasure chest that invokes memory and the balletic figure of Taglioni.
Opening the lid feels like peering into a tiny, frozen stage: rows of translucent, ice-like glass cubes sit in dark plush velvet—some tipped or clustered—while a delicate chain arcs across the inner lid and a narrow strip of printed text hints at a hidden narrative.
One of Cornell’s intimate assemblage-boxes, it reconceived sculpture as poetic cabinet-making—elevating found trinkets into dreamlike narratives and helping to expand collage and Surrealist ideas into three-dimensional, cinematic modernism.
Medium
Velvet-lined wooden box containing glass necklace, jewelry fragments, glass chips, and glass cubes resting in slots on glass
Dimensions
4 3/4 x 11 7/8 x 8 1/4" (12 x 30.2 x 21 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of James Thrall Soby
Accession
474.1953
Palette
Exhibitions
