Louis Comfort Tiffany Scarab Paperweight

775

Here is a rare and beautiful Tiffany scarab paper weight, desk conversation piece. Is very heavy and measures 5" x 3" and is properly signed with the acid etch signature "LCT". The color is the cobalt blue iridescent. Shows some slight wear on the bottom surface.

Louis C. Tiffany realized the symbolic significance of the thousands of years old scarab and made these beauties in his New York studio. It is believed that the owner of the scarab has sexual enhanced powers and also brings peace to the home.

By far the most important amulet in ancient Egypt was the scarab, symbolically as sacred to the Egyptians as the cross is to Christians. Scarabs were already known in the Old Kingdom, and in the First Intermediate Period the undersides were decorated. They were probably sacred in the Prehistoric Period and had a role in the early worship of animals, judging from the actual beetles that were found stored in jars buried with the deceased and from those found in graves during the time of King Den of Dynasty I. A scaraboid-shaped alabaster box from Tarkhan seems to confirm that the scarab was already venerated at the beginning of Dynasty I. Scarabs are the most numerous amulets and were produced well beyond the dynastic periods. One accepts (with the ancient Egyptians), that these varieties are only male beetles, that they put down their seed substance (semen) which forms a ball and the beetle rolls it forward with its widely spaced hind legs so that the beetle imitates the path of the sun as it went down in the west and rose in the east in the mornings.