Busacca Gallery

Two white alabaster hand carved Art Deco heads of men fauns, bookends. The subject is a very charming white carving of two powerful men fauns or Satyrs with horns as matching bookends. These are two Heads carved in white alabaster, it is circa 1920. It is Italian in origin, These are very appealing alabaster Satyrs heads. The faun (also phaunos or faunus) is a rustic forest god or place-spirit (genii) of Roman mythology often associated with Greek satyrs and the Greek god Pan. The faun is a half human - half goat (from the head to the waist being the human half, but with the addition of goat's horns) manifestation of forest and animal spirits which would help or hinder humans at whim. Romans believed fauns inspired fear in men traveling in lonely, remote or wild places. They were also capable of guiding humans in need, as in the fable of The Satyr and the Traveller, in the title of which Latin authors substituted the word Faunus. Fauns and satyrs were originally quite different creatures: whereas fauns are half-man and half-goat, satyrs originally were depicted as stocky, hairy, ugly dwarfs or woodwoses with the ears and tails of horses or asses. Ancient Roman mythological belief also included a god named Faunus and a goddess named Fauna who were goat people. One story describes the sensual experiences of a faun who has just woken up from his afternoon sleep and discusses his encounters with several nymphs during the morning in a dreamlike monologue.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabaster

Alabaster (sometimes called satin spar) is a name applied to varieties of two distinct minerals: gypsum (a hydrous sulfate of calcium) and calcite (a carbonate of calcium). The former is the alabaster of the present day; the latter is generally the alabaster of the ancients. The two kinds are readily distinguished from each other by their relative hardnesses. The gypsum kind is so soft as to be readily scratched by a finger-nail while the calcite kind is too hard to be scratched in this way, though it does yield readily to a knife. Alabaster, In the 15th century it's carving into icons and altarpieces was a valuable local industry throe out Europe. The finer kinds of alabaster are largely employed as an ornamental stone, especially for ecclesiastical decoration and for the rails of staircases and halls. Its softness enables it to be readily carved into elaborate forms, but its solubility in water renders it inapplicable to outdoor work. The purest alabaster is a snow-white material of fine tiniforni grain.