The art dealer Oliver Hoare believes in unicorns and has gathered a wealth of material and documentary evidence at an exhibition that he believes will convince any sceptic.
As he explains, leaning heavily on a silver-topped stick made (he claims) from unicorn horn, before the mid-16th century, anyone would instantly have recognised it – or the silver-mounted one he has included in his exhibition of bizarre and beautiful objects – as belonging to a unicorn. Indeed, kings and emperors were prepared to pay more for a unicorn’s horn than its weight in gold.
He rejects the idea that such fabulous objects, including his walking stick, are merely the tusks of narwhals: “It is axiomatic that you cannot perceive something in which you do not believe.”
In the exhibition, opening on Thursday in Sir John Lavery’s former painting studio in London, there are sculptures, seals and engravings representing unicorns across millennia. Hoare did consider commissioning a lifesize stuffed unicorn and hiring a beautiful maiden to sit with its head in her lap for the duration of the exhibition.
In his catalogue essay he writes: “The existence of unicorns is already stamped on Indus Valley seals of the mid-3rd millennium BC, and continue to be recorded through antiquity, the Middle Ages and beyond, in images, literature and poetry. And then, quite suddenly, belief in their existence faded. ”
The exhibition includes sections on magic, myths, sex, meteorites – and unicorns, illustrated by objects including a silver skull pomander said to have been owned by King James II, an outstanding collection of objects from the Indus Valley, polished slices of a meteorite, and a silver drinking vessel once owned by the grandson of Genghis Khan.
It was curated by Hoare’s nephew Richard, who said it was almost impossible to choose the 400 objects from his uncle’s collection. His personal favourite is a little bronze figure of a man from Siberia, made more than 2,300 years ago and covered from head to toe in tattoos. It also has multiple piercings for gold earrings. It comes from the Pazyryk culture, whose existence was only rediscovered from excavations in 1929.
“They mummified their dead, tattooed their skin, and inhaled cannabis in steam tents”, Hoare read from the catalogue, adding “it’s just like Sussex at the weekend, really.”
- Every Object Tells a Story is at 5 Cromwell Place in South Kensington, south-west London, from Thursday 4 May to 5 July. Admission is free.
