Joseph Cornell, Taglioni's Jewel Casket, 1940, wood box with velvet, glass cubes, blue glass, and glass jewlry, ¾” x 11⅞” x 8¼”, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Photo by istolethetv - Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution license.
Assemblage (noun)
A work of art, either two-dimensional or three-dimensional, created with found objects.
Joseph Cornell made assemblage sculptures that normally were boxes in which he arranged photographs and bric-à-brac to create new ideas with them. His Taglioni’s Jewel Casket is a box that pays homage to Marie Taglioni, an Italian ballerina who kept an imitation ice cube in her jewelry box to remind her of a time when she danced in the snow for a Russian highwayman.
