The Waddesdon Manor nautilus shell and triton: a masterpiece from the William Beckford Collection.(Buckinghamshire, England)

An object that has posed something of a mystery for more than a hundred years was recently identified as one of the fine pieces acquired by Baron Ferdinand Rothschild for Waddesdon Manor, his estate near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. It is a nautilus shell carved by Cornelius van Bellekin, one of the finest of its kind, mounted with a silver-gilt triton on a black marble base (see Pls. II and III). The elements, which were probably first assembled in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, were subsequently separated, probably in the early twentieth century. Although all the pieces were preserved in storage, their relationship to each other was forgotten. Then, ...