ON HOLD Incredible 19th C. Monastery Work Reliquary with Painted Saint and Elaborate Ornamentation wooden lion stamp 4 1/2" tall x 2

4 1/2" tall x 2 1/4" wide x 7/8" deep and carved on both sides

These are joined together by a woven seam

In my dreams I'd find a piece by early 20th c

and think one can never have too many

A great addition to a beautiful brush collection

ON HOLD Incredible 19th C. Monastery Work Reliquary with Painted Saint and Elaborate Ornamentation wooden lion stamp 4 1/2" tall x 2This amazing thing, what a piece of work! I'm not at all an expert on reliquaries, but certainly that is what this is, holding small relics of S. Asteria and S. Modesti, both martyrs as indicated by the M's following their names. (The relics themselves appear most likely to be the small bits of cloth under the handwritten labels bearing their names, though it's a but hard to tell given all that is packed in and woven together here! At the center is a