Statue of Bastet

Artisans: Koni Coursien and Teresa Dudley
Date: 2018
Inscriptions: signed and dated ‘K Coursien / T. Dudley / 2018’ (on the base)
Dimensions: 64 x 32 x 38 mm. / 2 ½ x 1 ¼ x 1 ½ inches (height x width x depth)
Inventory number: 2022.027
Intended Room: Museum
Category: Antiquities

Provenance: Bought from Miniature Cottage in 2022

One of the centrepieces of the Museum, this magnificent statue would be two and a half feet tall in real life. It shows the Egyptian goddess Bastet, daughter of Ra and Isis. Originally a powerful warrior goddess, her functions were later split between the fierce lion-goddess Sekhmet (who maintained the warlike function) and gentler Bastet. Although she is also shown with the head of a cat and a female body, she is often represented by fully cat-shaped sculptures. This is a miniature replica of one of the most splendid sculptures to survive from Egyptian antiquity, the Gayer-Anderson Cat. This bronze sculpture of Bastet, dating from around 600 BC, is now in the British Museum. Like the original, this miniature shows the goddess wearing golden earrings and a nose ring, along with a collar showing the Eye of Horus and, below, the winged scarab of rebirth.

Although we might nowadays associate Egyptomania with the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922, Charles Quartermaine is far from avant-garde. In fact, Europe has been gripped by a fascination with Egypt since the turn of the 19th century, when Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt led to the publication of prints and treatises by the scholars and artists who accompanied him. People were fascinated by this unfamiliar culture and soon everyone wanted their own obelisk. Cleopatra’s Needle was officially presented to Britain in 1819, although it was only shipped over in 1877, so in their youth Charles and Elizabeth would have seen it freshly installed on the Victoria Embankment in London. But they would have been too young to know William John Bankes, the owner of Kingston Lacy in Dorset, who amassed one of the best private collections of Egyptian artefacts in the country. Charles has done his best to compete, amassing a small but exquisite collection that includes mummy portraits and a bronze mirror.

We bought this wonderful sculpture without a name attached to it, but it is handily signed and dated on the base: ‘K Coursien / T. Dudley / 2018’. The latter is Teresa Dudley, who still trades as Northern Lites Miniatures, specialising in miniature medical equipment, and nowadays (according to LinkedIn) she goes by the name Teresa Dudley-Jewell. The former is Koni Coursien, her daughter and student. Both Teresa and Koni are originally from Libby in Montana.