Crystal Ball

The Penn Museum's crystal ball was purchased in 1927 from The Far East Shop, a fine arts division specializing in objects made of special gems inside the Wanamaker's department store in Philadelphia. It was given as a gift to the Penn Museum in memory of George Byron Gordon, the director of the museum at the time, who had recently passed away. It came with the name "Dowager Empress" attached to it, named after the Empress Dowager Cixi who ruled over China's last Dynasty. However, no evidence has ever come to light that connects the sphere with the Empress. Rather, the ball was likely made from a rock crystal deposit found in 1923 in Burma and then cut and polished in Shanghai before being imported into the United States. This mirrors the same provenance as the largest crystal ball in the world, now at the Smithsonian, which entered the U.S. around the same time.

It is the fourth largest crystal sphere in the world, with a diameter of 25.4 cm, and weighing 49 lbs. Two spheres in the Smithsonian (32.7 cm) and (27.6 cm) and the Crow Collection in Dallas (28.9 cm) are larger. The sphere is not made of glass, but rather from a naturally-occurring crystal of pure quartz. The silver stand, in the shape of a wave, was made in Japan, and may have been made to order after the sphere was purchased.