A unicorn bonbonnière, Birmingham, circa 1760

modelled and painted with ball and chain, curled on a sgraffito grass mound, the lid transfer-printed and coloured with a leopard hunt near pyramids

In the Middle Ages, a chained unicorn in a hortus conclusus was supposed to signify Christ's Incarnation in the Virgin's womb, the idea of His imprisonment in human flesh. This concept seems rather too abstruse for pragmatic Birmingham in the mid-18th century and it is more likely that the unicorn was merely considered as a wild beast that needed to be kept in chains just like the Birmingham enamel model of a chained bear ( an example of which is in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum).