Drie haarkammen, een sfinx en een zwaard 1817

Curator: Here we have "Three Hair Combs, a Sphinx and a Sword", an ink drawing on paper by Pietro Ruga from 1817. It's Neoclassical in style, like a page torn from an artisan's sketchbook. Editor: Right! My first thought is it looks like something out of a dream journal. A strange combination of the everyday, with those delicate hair combs, and the mythic, with that tiny, hovering sphinx. Curator: Considering the date, these designs would have likely been intended for production. Hair combs, especially, were highly ornamental objects during the Neoclassical period and demonstrate how high art ideas translated into popular material culture. The inclusion of the sphinx and classical motifs speaks to the taste of the time, almost literally branding commodity with status. Editor: I see that completely, the translation into commercial value is definitely evident. But there’s a haunting quality, too. The sketch-like lines almost disappear into the page. That makes me consider the lives of those objects beyond their mere utility. Did the comb make someone feel powerful? Was that sword ever really unsheathed in battle, or did it ever more likely languish on display as another symbol of its owners' power? I'm getting a ghostly feeling of lives lived and lost. Curator: I see what you're saying! You could look at this as the blueprint for power, and not as its end expression. Those commodities, beautiful and dangerous both, needed a physical beginning, represented through this pen and ink. And to think someone carefully rendered each line and detail by hand... That’s craft and labor, too! Editor: Yes! Every choice about ornamentation on these objects, those little decorative details and the care someone took making them – that speaks volumes, beyond just economics, it suggests aspirations. Someone dreamed this sword. They dreamed these combs. They literally summoned that sphinx into being on this page. It's a ghostly kind of power, maybe. Curator: Definitely something to ponder. For me, understanding the socio-economic factors is vital to appreciate how Neoclassicism saturated everyday life through things like this, these carefully considered material objects. Editor: Well, now I’m left thinking about the quiet act of sketching in a notebook. To imagine someone at work bringing mundane objects into being next to dream-like, almost surreal forms. A little bit like dreaming, isn’t it? Curator: Absolutely, that connection of intention is not separate from material culture but, of course, inextricably connected to the culture itself.