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Tagua Sculpture - Mantis among Heliconia
$270.00
Code: ITNR025
Size: 4" (10 cms) long
This hand carved and inked tagua nut sculpture is so elegant and so naturally posed. The composition features a particularly realistic mantis among heliconia flowers. The coloured regions are achieved with india inks and fine quills. Carving is traditionally a male activity among the indigenous Embera and Wounaan of the Darien region of eastern Panama. Historically and up to present times, highly skilled wood carvers among these two Native peoples have been fashioning elegant dugout canoes and shamanic ritual implements (carved staffs) in local rainforest hardwoods. Since the 60's, these carvers turned their attention to carving the potato-sized tagua ("ivory") nut on the suggestion, as it's been anecdotally told - by a biologist working and investigating in the Darien forest years ago. As carving was already a highly developed skill among these two tribes ancestrally, these carvers excelled in creating wonderful (and often, very naturally rendered) figurines in the tagua nut of local flora and fauna endemic to their territory. All pieces are signed by the artist.
Size: 4" (10 cms) long
This hand carved and inked tagua nut sculpture is so elegant and so naturally posed. The composition features a particularly realistic mantis among heliconia flowers. The coloured regions are achieved with india inks and fine quills. Carving is traditionally a male activity among the indigenous Embera and Wounaan of the Darien region of eastern Panama. Historically and up to present times, highly skilled wood carvers among these two Native peoples have been fashioning elegant dugout canoes and shamanic ritual implements (carved staffs) in local rainforest hardwoods. Since the 60's, these carvers turned their attention to carving the potato-sized tagua ("ivory") nut on the suggestion, as it's been anecdotally told - by a biologist working and investigating in the Darien forest years ago. As carving was already a highly developed skill among these two tribes ancestrally, these carvers excelled in creating wonderful (and often, very naturally rendered) figurines in the tagua nut of local flora and fauna endemic to their territory. All pieces are signed by the artist.