Whimsy Cat - Gourd Ornament
Add a fun splash to your holiday decor or give them away to all your cat loving friends!!! This handmade and natural gourd ornament was hand-carved by artists in Peru honoring a 4,000-year-old tradition. Details may vary as nature and the artists intended. Price is for ONE ornament.
An Ancient Craft
A living tradition more than 4,000 years in the making.
Long before gourds became Christmas ornaments and keepsakes, Peruvians were carving and decorating them for both practical and symbolic purposes.
Archaeological evidence from Huaca Prieta on Peru’s northern coast shows gourds used as bowls, bottles, dippers, fishing floats, and other everyday objects as early as the third millennium BCE. Some fragments were also carved and decorated with pyroengraving, showing that gourds had already become a surface for artistic expression.
Other archaeological discoveries reveal their deeper symbolic significance. A carved and painted gourd fragment dating to about 2250 BCE depicts the Staff God, one of the earliest known representations of a major Andean deity.
Remarkably, closely related techniques continue to this day. Artists still carve dried gourds by hand and use heat to darken and shade the surface, carrying forward an ancient Peruvian tradition with roots reaching back thousands of years.
Sources: American Museum of Natural History archaeological research at Huaca Prieta, published 1949; archaeological research on early Andean decorated gourds; Peru Ministry of Culture documentation on mate burilado, 2013.
1% For The Planet
As nature lovers, we want to do our part to contribute to a healthier planet. For us and our artist partners, nature is an endless source of inspiration, motivating us to seek more sustainable alternatives, eco-friendly materials, and greener ways of doing business.
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