Getty Museum

Horn

Date

17th or 18th century

Medium

Free-blown amber glass with lattimo canes and applied decoration, with leather case

Culture

Possibly Spanish

Department

Decorative Arts

Institution

Getty Museum

This horn is accompanied by its original leather case, now shrunken with age. The horn could have been used as a musical instrument or for drinking ceremonies. A French inventory from 1597 mentions "two glass [musical] horns with their leather cases," although these fragile objects were probably used more for ornament than for actually producing sounds. In France in the 1400s and 1500s, musical glass horns were also sold at pilgrimage sites, where, they would have hung from around the pilgrim's neck or waist in their leather carrying-cases. Horns with smaller openings at the tip, rather than the mouthpiece-like aperture of this example, must have been used as drinking vessels. From prehistoric times, people used actual animal horns as drinking vessels, while glass horns were used for drinking in Europe as early as the 200s.

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