Posted 7 years ago
ho2cultcha
(5042 items)
this statue weighs between 80 and 100 lbs. it feels like it's made of lead. a friend of mine inherited it from an elderly friend who passed away. she had lived in mexico and collected a lot of old pottery and art. she had said that she thought that this piece was pre-colombian. it looks like there are traces of polychrome, but i'm not sure. at first i thought it was a sheep, but now i think it might be a mountain lion. what could it have been used for - being so incredibly heavy. any info appreciated!
lucy weighs only 11 lbs!
Probably made 1953 or earlier. I have only one left that was brought to the USA from Mexico during the Korean war. Memory fails me but they were made on an island off Mexico. The one I have left I call "Prince Ugly". He is made of mostly red clay. Supposed to have been Aztec era. I will assume this was made close by because the weight defies logic. Unless it was one of the fake door stops.
Weigh it to find its mass. Submerge it in water and measure how much water it displaces to find its volume. Calculate its density, and look up whether the number suggest it being filled with lead, iron, sand, cement, ..., gold, ... ;)
thanks flhrjr2! do you have any photos o yours? i'd be interested in seeing them. noob- no chance of submerging this thing in water, but if it were dropped from about 10 ft, it could probably sink the titanic. it's much heavier than red clay. i think it's a very heavy concrete, but it does baffle me!
i think i finally found out what this is and it's a really interesting piece and MUCH older than anyone thought. i think that this is a Haniwa animal - a ram maybe. these were used in Ancient Japan and left on funeral mounds. they were made as heavy as possible so that people wouldn't move them. they are very rare. i'd bet the farm that this is an authentic one!
My daughter lives in Mexico and has come across several pieces of broken ancient pottery. That is a nice piece.
This is not Haniwa, but it is VERY old. I finally found out what it was about a year ago. It's a quadruped made by the Djenne Culture in the 12th - 16th century. Found this:
'fired red clay / ceramic, Ténenkou is a small district close to Mopti, Mali, west of the Inland Delta. A number of terracotta figures were found in its vicinity, dating from the 12th to the 16th century, and apparently discovered only around 1990. The Ténenkou culture can be regarded as roughly contemporaneous with the other major cults of this archaeological centre, such as Djenné or Bankoni.H: 34 cm: L: 40 cm, H: 13,4 inch: L: 15,7 inchProvenance:Lothar Heubel, Cologne, Germany (before 2007)Lit.: Schädler, Karl-Ferdinand, Erde und Erz, München 1997, p. 62 f. Continent: Africa'
Djenne is a really fascinating place! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djenn%C3%A9