Carved, inlaid with gold and originally partly polychromed. The body has been hollowed out for use as a container (for needles), the separately carved head serves as a cap.

The polychromy has largely worn off.

…; from the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden, The Hague, transferred to the museum, 1885

Object number: BK-NM-7346

This needle case in the form of a guitar-playing woman in fanciful garb with the head of a monkey belongs with another piece with a similar figure with a normal female head (BK-NM-7345).¹¹A. Pit, Catalogus van de beeldhouwwerken in het Nederlandsch Museum voor geschiedenis en kunst te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1904, no. 216; A. Pit, Catalogus van de beeldhouwwerken in het Nederlandsch Museum voor geschiedenis en kunst te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1915, no. 252. At the foot of both figures there is a seated monkey playing a wind instrument (clarinet?). The needle cases have been carved from ivory and are partly inlaid with gold. The rest of the surface was originally partly polychromed. No related pieces are known. To begin with, the needle cases were catalogued as French, but in 1973 Leeuwenberg placed the set in the Northern Netherlands, without further elaboration.²²J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 355. From the middle of the seventeenth until far into the eighteenth century, a comparable genre, that of figurative cutlery handles in ivory or boxwood, was indeed popular in the Northern Netherlands (cf. BK-KOG-1529). Although the rendering is somewhat stiff, the decorative style of the present needle cases suggests they are more likely to have originated in Germany, where such applied figurative ivory carvings were also being made on a considerable scale at that time.

Bieke van der Mark, 2025

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 355b, with earlier literature

B. van der Mark, 2025, 'anonymous, Monkey Playing the Guitar, Needle Case, Germany, 1700 - 1799', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035799