The visual arts flourished in the Fon Kingdom of Dahomey (modern Republic of Benin) from the 1720s until the French conquest in 1892. The Fon Kingdom evolved into a highly centralized monarchy with a large, sophisticated army that allowed it to expand to the Atlantic Coast by the mid-18th century.

Raised in Boston where she attended the Massachusetts Normal School in the late 1890s, Rebecca Cauman became affiliated with the Society of Arts and Crafts where she may have trained with master enameler Lauren Martin, who trained a number of leading Boston-area metalsmiths including Frank Marshall and Elizabeth Copeland.  Cauman's work in copper and enamel suggests the influence of these figures: stylized natural f

The precise circular geometry of this diminutive box represents a dramatic aesthetic shift for American design in the 1920s and a bold departure for its maker, metalsmith Rebecca Cauman.  A glass disk rises vertically within a pewter ring flanked by two smaller pewter disks, all resting upon a gently domed lid sectioned into eight parts by incised lines radiating from

Villanovan: 1000-750 B.C.E.

Etruscan: 750-50 B.C.E.

Roman Republic: 509-27 B.C.E.

Cycladic 3000-1450 B.C.E.

Minoan (Crete) 3000-1450 B.C.E.

Early Helladic (Greece) 3000-2100 B.C.E.

Middle and Late Helladic (Greece) 2100-1150 B.C.E.

Trojan 3000-1150 B.C.E.

Neolithic Age: 8000-3000 B.C.E.

Early Bronze Age: 3000-2000 B.C.E.

Sumerian

Akkadian

Archaic Period: 3100-2700 B.C.E.

Old Kingdom: 2700-2250 B.C.E.