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Gourd and
Rooster
Angelica Silva
Peru
The village of
Chulacana in northern Peru produces its own brand of crafts, chulacana
art. The distinctive product or artifact are the charmingly rotund clay figures
with their soft and satiny finish resulting from a firing process that uses
smoldering mango leaves. The ancestor and model of these ample and portly
figures is the gourd-like fruit of the calabash tree. Calabash shells, once used
to represent human figures thanks to a carved little head added to the gourd,
mutated over time to become the colorful and much sought-after clay sculptures
like the ones in this nativity sets. The prominently featured rooster is a
typical presence in Latin American nativity sets. It is a symbol of treason and
reconciliation (Saint Peter) and, more generally, a harbinger of fertility. |