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Tagua Sculpture - Red-eyed Green Tree frog and Heliconia
$248.00
Code: ITNR023
Size: 3 3/4" (9.5 cms) tall
This small, intricate sculpture is a realistic rendering of a red-eyed green tree frog resting upon a heliconia plant. The artist consciously has left the natural tagua nut base exposed alongside the remarkable, naturalistic sculpted rendering of this amphibian and forest plant. The coloured regions is 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.
Size: 3 3/4" (9.5 cms) tall
This small, intricate sculpture is a realistic rendering of a red-eyed green tree frog resting upon a heliconia plant. The artist consciously has left the natural tagua nut base exposed alongside the remarkable, naturalistic sculpted rendering of this amphibian and forest plant. The coloured regions is 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.