Bird possibly
Effigy Mounds National Monument, located in Harpers Ferry, Iowa, preserves more than 200 Late Woodland Period (300-1100 CE) mounds, including 31 effigy mounds in the shapes of birds and bears. The largest is the Great Bear Mound, which is 70 feet wide (from the shoulder to the bottom of the legs), 137 feet long, and 3.5 feet high. The site also includes a visitor center with exhibits displaying artifacts and natural specimens, and 14 miles of hiking trails (see below). Effigy Mounds National Monument was established in 1949 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.
from the Walters Art Museum, in Baltimore, Maryland.
St.Dunstan’s Church credit to: https://www.flickr.com/photos/vagrantpunk/
from the Walters Art Museum, in Baltimore, Maryland.
Northern Peru's pottery traditions focus on three-dimensionality, the vessels often modeled into a variety of volumetric forms depicting human figures, fruits, or vegetables and even architecture. The coastal Moche and their highland Recuay neighbors were masters of the modeled form, having explored and perfected this tradition whose origins reach back as much as a thousand years among cultures of the Early Horizon (900 -200 BCE). Recuay pottery is typically thin-walled and made from a kaolin-based clay. Vessels are decorated with negative-resist and positive slip painting as well as an unusual post-fire, resist black organic pigment. The varied resist-painting techniques allowed Recuay artists to create complex design fields on the positive, slip-painted backgrounds. Recuay art, and especially its narrative pottery, features the Andean concepts of dualism and reciprocity as key universal facets. Emphasis was placed on dyads such as male-female, which is aptly expressed by this extraordinary figural bottle. A finely dressed noble woman stands at opposing sides of the four-sided vessel, while a male personage flanks the other two faces. The males pertain to a second dyad of warrior and captive, the latter represented as a trophy head rather than a full figure. The women and warrior cradle ceremonial cups, perhaps "keros" (see WAM 2009.20.91) in their hands; the male figure also clutches a war club in his right hand. His fine clothing and headdress identify him as a member of the ruling class. The iconic face in his headdress recalls depictions of ancestors and cult figures as prime shamanic beings that often adorn the heads of authority figures from earliest times throughout Peru. Considered together, this four-sided figural vessel embodies the Andean ideology of war and sacrifice to ensure the earth's fertility and maintain universal balance. The taking of captives for ritual sacrifice was facilitated by the victor's shamanic power, here implied by the male figure's headdress. As elsewhere in ancient Peru, this ceremonial pageant was a sacred necessity and the responsibility of the nobility. It is reflected in stone sculptures from the Recuay area (the highland Callejón de Huaylas region), which feature small trophy heads and larger male figures carrying clubs, shields, or decapitated heads. The Recuay tradition of public stone sculptures portraying women echoes their depictions on pottery vessels, signaling the importance of female participants in both ritual and political events.
From the Waccamaw or Pee Dee Tribe in South Carolina
Effigy Corset
from the Walters Art Museum, in Baltimore, Maryland.
From 2013 "Monsters and Misfits III" show - Circus Posterus and Tomenosuke-syoten, in Takayama, Japan. SOLD.
Qualitative x-ray fluorescence analysis identified the presence of gold, copper, and silver, with silver content in keeping with elevated levels of other Colombian examples.
St Peter's church in Barford is a mainly 19th century building with a 14th century tower, having been another recipient of the generosity of Mrs Louisa Ann Ryland (who rebuilt nearby Sherbourne church) who funded the rebuilding of all but the medieval tower in 1844 by R.C.Hussey. It has as much of a late Georgian as early Victorian feel to it. There are a few monuments from the old church, most notably the badly defaced 14th century effigy of a woman under the tower (originally in the churchyard) and the Dugard memorial of 1683 in the chancel. The remainder are tablets and urns roughly contemporary with the rebuilding of the church. The glass is of 1845 by William Holland of Warwick, and only the east window with it's Evangelist figures is fully pictoral, the remainder being in decorative quarries (except in the south aisle where the main lights have been removed c1950).
Bird Effigy Vessel, Unknown, Panama, Cubita style, 500–700 CE, Ceramics, Slip-painted ceramic.
from the Walters Art Museum, in Baltimore, Maryland.
Qualitative x-ray fluorescence analysis identified the presence of gold, copper, and silver.
from the Walters Art Museum, in Baltimore, Maryland.
