Combing Over Museums

Sometimes inspirations pursue you.

From the moment we first ventured out in London, I was captivated by combs. There in the British Museum I spied the first one, millenia old, a simple comb surmounted by a goat, carved from horn.



In Paris, meeting up with my Belgian friend, Un-Roen Manarata, and her husband, Winoc, to visit the Musee d'Orsay, I spotted Art Deco combs and bought books about Rene Lalique, featuring several combs. Later at the Museum of Decorative Arts I swooned over more of his combs as well as those of Lucien Gaillard and Henry de Waroquier. There seemed to be combs everywhere I turned, many I couldn't photograph and now can't find on the web.


Lacking a sketchbook in my small purse, I sometimes resorted to using the floor map to record names and rough outlines of pieces I liked. There are two combs on the center left part of the map of the Museum of Decorative Arts, including the one with maple seeds shown in the photo above, which I found on the web.


When I had a few minutes to sketch, combs were a regular result. These are all related to that map sketch comb.





I'm now trying to think through construction of such a comb in bronze clay.