Fox and Hare
1990? Two knife-holders presenting a fox and a hare. 3½" x 1½" (hare) and 4" x 1". Unknown source.
The elongated bodies fit with their role as knife-rests. Is there a fable of a fox and a hare? Yes, says Northcote, who presents this story: " A little timorous Rabbit, who had a safe retreat in his burrow underground, had often perceived an artful Fox lurking near the spot, as if watching for the first opportunity to seize and devour him. However, he lay secure for the present, as the Fox could not enter the small burrow. One day, soon after, the devoted Rabbit saw the Fox in deep confabulation, and seemingly in great amity with the Weasel. This, he conjectured, boded no good to himself, as he found but too soon to be the case; for presently after the Weasel entered his burrow, and attacked him with such fury and fierceness, that he had no other chance of saving his life but by flight. But no sooner bad he darted from his burrow, than he immediately found himself seized on by the Fox; who, together with the Weasel, began to tear him in pieces, when thus the unfortunate victim of their arts, in his dying agonies, uttered his complaint: “I foresaw that my doom was determined on when you two counseled together.” I presume that I acquired these as fable knife-rests. I have not been able to identify a larger set to which they might belong.
