A Collectors’ Gourd
$2,000
Please write to us if interested in purchase. This piece is not
available through our shopping cart.

 

Pablo and his wife Ana spent several months producing this marvelous piece for a special exhibit in the year 2000. It is an example of the best of Peruvian gourd carving. The many hundreds of images depict both traditional and actual events that impacted the people of their village. We have selected several portions of the gourd to highlight the “stream of consciousness” quality of the “story” the gourd tells.

The signatures of Ana and Pablo appear below a a domestic scene depicting some potato harvesting, bread baking and autos leaving on a trip.

Life in an Andean community has many communal qualities. Planting, harvesting and even home building involve shared community labor. This part of the gourd probably depicts the building of a couple of new homes for young members of the community who are about to be married.

When visiting the village of Cochas Chicas one can see a huge metal cross in the distance. This cross was constructed from fragmented parts of places and things that were blown up by the Shining Path Terrorist who terrorized the area in the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s. The scene portrayed in this detail represents a governmental incursion into the village as they attempted to locate terrorists. The terror for Pablo and his neighbors came from both sides in this dark period of their lives. The cross mentioned above was built as a symbol of the people’s defiance of that terror, whatever its source.

Peru is a land of great biological and environmental diversity. The eastern slopes of the Andes provide the major rainfall that becomes the Amazon River. The storied jungles of South America are just “down the hill” from Pablo’s home in Cochas Chicas.

While it may surprise some to see a jungle in an Andean story, jungles and their products may impact the “story” of Pablo and his neighbors even more than the sea and the desert on Peru’s Pacific coast.