A short video showing the details of a dower chest I crafted in Autodesk Maya. It was inspired by ornate cassones of the Italian Renaissance, which were commissioned to hold the dowry of a bride and then become a fixture in her home after her marriage, as well as the folk tradition of dowry chests that preceded the cassone throughout the western world up until the 20th century.
By contrast to the usually positive symbolism on dowry chests, the symbolism on the chest was taken from an Ancient Roman cinerary urn (see below), and the date listed on the placard is the date of my college graduation--celebrating the end of something instead of the beginning. I chose to make it because, instead of being married off at my current age as I might have been as little as a century ago, the major transition I have just experienced was my graduation from student to adult. This was meant to be a prelude to my other 3D artifact video, WARES.
Examples of dower chests that inspired this piece:
Top Left: Apollonio di Giovanni and Marco del Buono,Trebizond Cassone, Italian, c. 1460, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Top Right: Cassone, Italian, second half of the 16th century (rebuilt, with replacements), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Bottom Left: Cinerary Urn, Roman, Late 1st/early 2nd century A.D., Art Institute of Chicago.
Bottom Right: Chest, New York, 1805/20, Art Institute of Chicago.
The ox skull and garlands are Ancient Roman motifs associated with death and sacrifice.
The "etching" on the underside of the lid is taken from an image of the view from Empire Bluffs in Empire, Michigan, which I visited as a child.
