Posted 6 years ago
Jenny14020
(1 item)
This is a clay or possibly bone bottle. On one side is a crude quarter moon, on the other is a devilish face with sharp teeth. It looks quite old, with many cracks. Does anyone know what this is?
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Welcome to CW! You should get answers here. Interesting piece!!!
Difficult to say from a picture but I have a couple guesses. First it looks quite like soapstone I have seen around New England. Back during the late 1700's and through the 1800's the Indian tribes up there carved a great deal of it for utensils, bowls etc. I believe I still have one of their early bowls posted on my page. Second guess would be it might be carved from antler. Difficult call from a photo.
I have no idea about the material this is made of but I have a though about the design.
Starting with photo #2: there’s the moon’s face with one eye open (just barely waking), you can still see the landscape below the moon - looks like a bridge railing with a river below or a long fence next to a field, above the moon are the many stars of the night sky.
Then in photo #1, there’s the moon again but this time fully awake with both eyes open, there are still the stars of the night sky above the moon, now, below the moon, it’s too dark to make out any of the details of the landscape.
There’s the sun in both scenes, shedding it’s light on the moon.
If you reverse your pictures and have the “one-eyed moon” first, the story it’s telling will be more obvious. ;-)
It’s very interesting; very clever of the maker!