Edgar Brandt Pair of "Cobra" Bookends

This arresting pair of "Cobra" Bookends assume a particularly dramatic pose, with their throats dilated and their bodies coiled, their scaled skin beautifully rendered in wrought iron. Brandt was fascinated, as was the world, by the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter on November 4, 1922. The Mask of Tutankhamun was decorated with the figure of the sacred cobra to ward off enemies. Carter’s stupendous archaeological achievement was revealed in photographs of the tomb’s treasures, and their publication coincided with the ironsmith’s preparations from the Paris exposition. Egyptian motifs thereafter became a mainstay in Brandt’s oeuvre, twisting and weaving with the exotic symbols of the Orient.