CATÀLEG

             ARCHITECTURE OF
 BANYA DE CÉRVOL 
Torre Grossa Castle (Xixona)


Chest reconstructed with bone plaques and metal ornaments
h: 26 cm; w: 11 cm; e: 10 cm (restored)
Islàmic
Almohad
End of the twelfth century, first half of the thirteenth century 
 

A prismatic chest with a wooden base and decorated on the outside with carved plaques made of banya de cérvol, with incised decoration with geometric motifs. Its iron fittings are made of bronze, copper and others of brass which, as a whole, correspond to the garniments, lance-shaped frontispieces and ornaments with ornamental carved wooden finials with holes for the keystones. The remains of its panel and nail, as well as the loop, have been preserved.
In the old excavations carried out at the Torre Grossa castle in Xixona, more than a hundred small pieces of bone of different sizes were found, together with various fragmented metal pieces corresponding to ironwork and frontispieces, which were published individually but without establishing any association between them (Azuar, 1984). Subsequently, thanks to the study by J.A. López Padilla, it was discovered that they came from a workshop for carving the cervical plaques in the same castle, of which the plaques have been preserved in different stages of carving and the plaques have also been identified (López Padilla, 1995). The analysis of the whole has made it possible to identify the workshop and reconstruct the chest, the original shape of which would have been prismatic, with an iron base, recovered from wooden plaques and with ironwork and tanquetry, in the style that was widespread in al-Andalus at the end of the 12th century and the first half of the 13th century, as in the examples of those found at Alarcos (Ciudad Real), published by M. Casamar (Ciudad Real, 1995, no. 128, 282-3) and the castle of Moura (Portugal), published by S. Macías (1994, 297; Lisbon, 1998, no. 66, 103).
CS: 8296
AZUAR, R., 1984.
AZUAR, R., LÓPEZ, J.A., 1997.
CIUDAD REAL, 1995.
LÓPEZ PADILLA, J.A., 1995.
LÓPEZ PADILLA, J.A., 1996.
LISBON, 1998.
MACIAS, S., 1993.