Adam's Country House Collections 12th & 13th October 2020

196 Country House Collections 565 A COLLECTION OF THREE RARE COPTIC TEXTILE FRAGMENTS, Egypt 4th to 11th century, comprising a three figure panel, mounted, 25 x 13 cm high, a geometric carpet fragment, mounted and framed 26 x 20 high, and a linear panel with interlinked lozenges, mounted and framed, 30 x 6 cm high. Provenance: Pitt Rivers Collection, Sothebys 1974 € 3,000 - 5,000 567 A PAIR OF IRISH CELTIC SANDSTONE HEADS, modelled as amale and female, each carved with pronounced features in relief, the female with characteristic coiffure, each 36cm high Provenance: Formerly Inch House, Moress, Inch Island, Co. Donegal € 4,000 - 6,000 Inch Island situated in the far north-west, at the neck of Lough Swilly, is home to a rich heritage of historic sites including Neolithic standing stones, bronze- age graves, iron-age forts, an early Christian sites and medieval castles. The area is renowned for the Flight of the Earls in 1607, which paved the way for the plantations and the arrival of Scottish and English settlers in the area. They replaced the Old Gaelic and Anglo-Norman families who had ruled for centuries. As the Plantation began, Inch was owned by Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy of Ireland. He surrendered tracts of land to the King’s Grantee, the Duke of Lennox, including thousands of acres in the Laggan and in Inishowen. Chichester did retain some land on Inch, which were passed on to his younger brother and eventually became the seat of the Lords Templemore, at Inch House. Inch House built in the Queen Anne style in 1730, overlooks the channel between Inch and Fahan. Originally built by the Earl of Donegall, over the years the house has had numerous owners and in the mid-1800s, it became the residence of Lord Templemore’s steward, Isaac Colhoun. Recent scholarship has shown that a large number of Celtic heads are in existence. While the discovery sites are not always known, and they are often moved from their original locations, these heads placement in Inch House, a site of Gaelic families and later British settlers adds to their intrigue. As Celtic idols, the plantation settlers, as Presbyterians, would presumably have refrained from displaying the heads in their house. For the Celtic stone heads, the range in terms physiognomic features are quite broad but sculpting of hair as a characteristic is not uncommon. In particu- lar in later Romano-Celtic versions, there are examples of quite elaborate coiffures. The deeply incised lines and detailed modelling were used to suggest individual strands of hair, as on the female head in this lot. Both heads are entities in and of themselves, with substantial necks, not attached to a torso but most likely set into wall similar to Celtic head in rear of the Church at Rostherne near Knutsford in Britain. The human head is central to Celtic iconography, appearing in many materials, stone, wood and metal. Their significance as objects of religious symbolism is similar to that of the cross for early Christians.