Unicorn

Vintage Large 12.5” White Ceramic Porcelain Glazed Unicorn With Gold Horn And Brown Base - No Chips Or Cracks!

Large Collectable 12.5" Ceramic Unicorn - LGBT symbol

This vintage porcelain unicorn figurine stands at a majestic 12 inches tall. Its beautiful white glazed finish is accentuated by a gold Unicorn horn, making it a stunning addition to any collection. The piece shows signs of it's age with very minor crazing on it's back, and there are no chips or cracks.

The unicorn's magical essence is captured in its intricate design, perfect for any lover of fantasy and mythical creatures. The item falls under the categories of collectibles, fantasy, mythical and magic, and unicorns. Let this enchanting piece transport you to a world of wonder and imagination.

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NO Original Box - May Be A Vintage Craft Item Made With A Mold

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About this item:

Age: For Adult Collectors

Contents: (1) Ceramic Unicorn Figurine

Approx. Size: 12.5" Tall x 12.5" Long x 4.75" Wide

Box/Card Measures: No Original Box
 
Weight: 2 Lb. 0.4 Oz.

Brand: Unbranded

Manufacturer: Unbranded

MPN: N/A Unknown

UPC: N/A Unknown

Made In: Guessing The USA

Year: Guessing Circa 1970's - 1980's

Condition: Item In Great Vintage Condition (Has Very Light Crazing) - No Original Box - Sold As Is - What You See Is What You Get - See Photos & Video for any Issues! 

Due to many unpaid items, if you have less than a 5 positive feedback score, please contact us prior to bidding!

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Freshwater Creek Pickers takes great care to provide you with high-quality items in the best possible condition. While many of our beautiful pieces have had charmed lives, some are well loved and may exhibit some wear, or a manufacturing blemish. This is typical of vintage and antique treasures. We will mention any major imperfection to the best of our ability. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or to request more images. Photographs are also part of the description & at times can cause items to appear larger than they are. The color on the item may vary slightly from the color on your screen due to monitor color restrictions. 

NOTE: Due to the nature of antique and vintage items, all items are sold "AS IS" and sales are final, we do not accept returns. If you are unsure about an item and need additional photos or have any questions, please notify us prior to making your purchase. We would be happy to hear from you. Thanks again for looking!

 WARNING: Freshwater Creek Pickers sells adult collectable products for purchase by adults 18 years and over. If any product you are purchasing is intended for a child please assume the following warning may apply to that product. WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD -- Small parts. Not for children under 3 yrs.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Unicorn

The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead.

In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the last thousand years or so been depicted as a white horse-like or goat-like animal with a long straight horn with spiralling grooves, cloven hooves, and sometimes a goat's beard. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it was commonly described as an extremely wild woodland creature, a symbol of purity and grace, which could be captured only by a virgin. In encyclopedias, its horn was described as having the power to render poisoned water potable and to heal sickness. In medieval and Renaissance times, the tusk of the narwhal was sometimes sold as a unicorn horn.

A bovine type of unicorn is thought by some scholars to have been depicted in seals of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization, the interpretation remaining controversial. An equine form of the unicorn was mentioned by the ancient Greeks in accounts of natural history by various writers, including Ctesias, Strabo, Pliny the Younger, Aelian, and Cosmas Indicopleustes. The Bible also describes an animal, the re'em, which some translations render as unicorn.

The unicorn continues to hold a place in popular culture. It is often used as a symbol of fantasy or rarity. In the 21st century, it has become an LGBT symbol.

History

Indus Valley civilization

A creature with a single horn, conventionally called a unicorn, is the most common image on the soapstone stamp seals of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization ("IVC"), from the centuries around 2000 BC. It has a body more like a cow than a horse, and a curved horn that goes forward, then up at the tip.^{[citation needed]} The mysterious feature depicted coming down from the front of the back is usually shown; it may represent a harness or other covering. Typically, the unicorn faces a vertical object with at least two stages; this is variously described as a "ritual offering stand", an incense burner, or a manger. The animal is always in profile on Indus seals, but the theory that it represents animals with two horns, one hiding the other, is disproved by a (much smaller) number of small terracotta unicorns, probably toys, and the profile depictions of bulls, where both horns are clearly shown. It is thought that the unicorn was the symbol of a powerful "clan or merchant community", but may also have had some religious significance.

In South Asia, the unicorn is only seen during the IVC period, and disappeared in South Asian art after this. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer stated the IVC "unicorn" has no "direct connection" with later unicorn motifs observed in other parts of the world; nonetheless, it remains possible that the IVC unicorn had contributed to later myths of fantastical one-horned creatures in West Asia.

Classical antiquity

Unicorns are not found in Greek mythology, but rather in the accounts of natural history, for Greek writers of natural history were convinced of the reality of unicorns, which they believed lived in India, a distant and fabulous realm for them. The earliest description is from Ctesias, who in his book Indika ("On India") described them as wild asses, fleet of foot, having a horn a cubit and a half (700 mm, 28 inches) in length, and colored white, red and black. Unicorn meat was said to be too bitter to eat.

Ctesias got his information while living in Persia. Unicorns or, more likely, winged bulls, appear in reliefs at the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis in Iran. Aristotle must be following Ctesias when he mentions two one-horned animals, the oryx (a kind of antelope) and the so-called "Indian ass" (ἰνδικὸς ὄνος). Antigonus of Carystus also wrote about the one-horned "Indian ass". Strabo says that in the Caucasus there were one-horned horses with stag-like heads. Pliny the Elder mentions the oryx and an Indian ox (perhaps a greater one-horned rhinoceros) as one-horned beasts, as well as "a very fierce animal called the monoceros which has the head of the stag, the feet of the elephant, and the tail of the boar, while the rest of the body is like that of the horse; it makes a deep lowing noise, and has a single black horn, which projects from the middle of its forehead, two cubits [900 mm, 35 inches] in length." In On the Nature of Animals (Περὶ Ζῴων Ἰδιότητος, De natura animalium), Aelian, quoting Ctesias, adds that India produces also a one-horned horse (iii. 41; iv. 52), and says (xvi. 20) that the monoceros (μονόκερως) was sometimes called cartazonos (καρτάζωνος), which may be a form of the Arabic karkadann, meaning 'rhinoceros'.

Cosmas Indicopleustes, a merchant of Alexandria who lived in the 6th century, made a voyage to India and subsequently wrote works on cosmography. He gives a description of a unicorn based on four brass figures in the palace of the King of Ethiopia. He states, from report, that "it is impossible to take this ferocious beast alive; and that all its strength lies in its horn. When it finds itself pursued and in danger of capture, it throws itself from a precipice, and turns so aptly in falling, that it receives all the shock upon the horn, and so escapes safe and sound"

Middle Ages and Renaissance

Medieval knowledge of unicorns stemmed from biblical and ancient sources, and unicorns were variously represented as a kind of wild ass, goat, or horse.

Several European medieval travelers claimed to have seen unicorns in their travels outside of Europe. For example Felix Fabri claimed to have seen a unicorn in Sinai.

The predecessor of the medieval bestiary, compiled in Late Antiquity and known as Physiologus (Φυσιολόγος), popularized an elaborate allegory in which a unicorn, trapped by a maiden (representing the Virgin Mary), stood for the Incarnation. As soon as the unicorn sees her, it lays its head on her lap and falls asleep. This became a basic emblematic tag that underlies medieval notions of the unicorn, justifying its appearance in both secular and religious art. The unicorn is often shown hunted, raising parallels both with vulnerable virgins and sometimes the Passion of Christ. The myths refer to a beast with one horn that can only be tamed by a virgin; subsequently, some writers translated this into an allegory for Christ's relationship with the Virgin Mary.

The unicorn also figured in courtly terms: for some 13th-century French authors such as Thibaut of Champagne and Richard de Fournival, the lover is attracted to his lady as the unicorn is to the virgin. With the rise of humanism, the unicorn also acquired more orthodox secular meanings, emblematic of chaste love and faithful marriage. It plays this role in Petrarch's Triumph of Chastity, and on the reverse of Piero della Francesca's portrait of Battista Strozzi, paired with that of her husband Federico da Montefeltro (painted c. 1472–74), Bianca's triumphal car is drawn by a pair of unicorns.

However, when the unicorn appears in the medieval legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, ultimately derived from the life of the Buddha, it represents death, as the Golden Legend explains. Unicorns in religious art largely disappeared after they were condemned by Molanus after the Council of Trent.

The unicorn, tamable only by a virgin woman, was well established in medieval lore by the time Marco Polo described them as "scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of a buffalo and feet like an elephant's. They have a single large black horn in the middle of the forehead... They have a head like a wild boar's... They spend their time by preference wallowing in mud and slime. They are very ugly brutes to look at. They are not at all such as we describe them when we relate that they let themselves be captured by virgins, but clean contrary to our notions." It is clear that Marco Polo was describing a rhinoceros.

Read  More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn