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  • image Image 1 for BL4
  • image Image 2 for BL4
Deer BL4. ©Sir John Soane's Museum. Photo: John Bridges.
  • image Image 1 for BL4
  • image Image 2 for BL4

Fallow deer, Japanese (pair with BL3)

Stoneware

Museum number: BL4

On display: Book Passage (pre-booked tours only)
All spaces are in No. 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields unless identified as in No. 12, Soane's first house. For tours https://www.soane.org/your-visit

Curatorial note

This ceramic deer has four small holes in the top of the head, presumably for antlers.

Deer are the sacred animals of the famous Kasuga shrine in Nara, Japan, and it is possible that Soane's pair of deer came from there. Similar deer are known in brass. They were probably new or relatively new when Sir John Soane acquired them some time before 1837.

The Soane Museum AB inventory, 1837, described this item as A Grotesque Non-descript Animal in China [i.e. ceramic].


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