I'd guess this beautiful hand-tooled leather chain of sorts was once part of some sort of animal harness, but I'm not completely certain. I spotted it hanging straight down from a wall hook at an antique show in Connecticut this past weekend and thought it was just an absolutely gorgeous, super viscerally satisfying thing. The leather is hardened and nearly black, with an almost tar-like crackled surface, with each link in the chain slightly wider than the previous until terminating in a looped piece attached by what seem to me to be wooden pegs to a wooden end, broken off at the end. There is an old number on that end piece that looks to me like an accession number, but I don't know any more about it than that. Now it reads as pure sculpture, with a really fantastic presence; I would just hang it on the wall and appreciate its beauty.
24” l x 2 3/4” widest x 1 1/8” d and apart from the loss to the wooden bit at the end in very good condition, sturdy and stable.
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