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Miniature Monstrance, Fairy Castle

Specifications

Miniature Monstrance, Fairy Castle

Category

Art, Architecture, and Design

Classification

CHENHALL - Communication Objects - Ceremonial Objects - Religious Objects - Container, Ritual - Monstrance
CHENHALL - Communication Objects - Arts - Visual Arts - Sculpture - Miniature

Object Origin
Date Created:

1928-1935

Physical Characteristics

Object Description: Miniature gold monstrance with cluster of three (3) gemstones at top and one (1) at the bottom of circle. Monstrance contains a wood splinter placed in the shape of a cross with a white cross background. Surrounding the oblong circle containing the cross are gold imprinted sunrays, gold pineapple shaped shaft connects to base.

Materials:

gold

wood

Marks: On front: "Cruc. D.N.J.C." On back: "Webb (c) Webb"

Measurements: Object:
    Height: 2.75 in, Width: 1.5 in, Diameter: 1 in
    Weight: 0.075 lbs

Credit

Gift of Colleen Moore, 49.129.199

Display Status

On Exhibit

Miniature Monstrance, Fairy Castle

About: Miniature Monstrance, Fairy Castle

About: Miniature Monstrance, Fairy Castle

Sitting on the altar in the Fairy Castle’s Chapel is a gold monstrance used in churches to display an object. Inside this monstrance is said to be a sliver of the true cross. The monstrance was designed by New York jeweler David Webb and the sliver of the true cross was a gift to Colleen Moore from Clare Booth Luce (1903–1987) a playwright, congresswoman, ambassador to Rome, and wife of Henry Luce (founder of Time magazine) in memory of Luce’s daughter who had been killed in a car accident. The Chapel of the Fairy Castle is decorated throughout with inlaid ivory embellished with symbolic events of the Old Testament, designed by Bayard de Volo. In the center of the design are the Ten Commandments hewn into the stone tablets. The gold and ivory Chapel organ was carved in Italy and has over a hundred keys, each barely a sixteenth of an inch wide, and it even plays music through an electrical system via remote control. Finally, the ceiling is decorated from the illuminations of the Book of Kells, a medieval illuminated manuscript preserved in Dublin, Ireland.

Related Objects

Related Objects

Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle

Art, Architecture, and Design

Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle

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Additional information

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