Yesterday in class we traveled down to LA200 to check out the last presentation in the international series. It was a focus on East Asia and the research James Robson has done with Asian wooden statues. It wasn’t only the statues themselves that he was interested in but their contents. These small wooden statues had been very popular but had been become almost nonexistent during communism (1949-1980s) when they were burned and destroyed. Robson has found 5 collections of these small wooden statues. They were originally coming out of the Hunan Province. He has found 3 large collections while doing his research; one museum (in Milwaukee I believe) and also two private collectors.
The statues are usually about 6-8 inches tall and made of campfer wood. They are usually made in the image of gods, ancestors, or priests, etc. What is so interesting about these statues is that they have cavities in the back of them. There are also holes for the mouth, ears, and nose that lead back to the cavities. Inside the cavities were a range of medicinal elements wrapped in five different colored threads to represent the five main organs. They would even find a small animal, such as a lizard or spider, and put it inside the cavity. They thought that when the creature died it would lend it’s soul to the statue and then the statue would be alive. That is why they also gave breathing holes and the symbols for the five organs.
Inside the cavities they would also stick a small piece of paper that would tell about it. The paper gave the address of where the statue lived, name of the statue, why they consecrated the statue, date the statue was consecrated, name of the carver, and the talismans to empower the statue. This paper also listed the names of the family that lived in the household. This is the first time in history that we have documentation of women’s names as well as the men in a family.
I really enjoyed this lecture. I thought it was really interesting how people had discarded these statues or not thought anything of their importance and then Robson did all this research to find out some very interesting things about the statues. We got who, what, when, where, and how… Maybe he should consider being a reporter or journalist!!! You could tell that this was the work of a good researcher.
I found this website that had some pictures of the statues he was telling us about and posted one of the pics below that is on the website. There are more on there if you want to take a closer look. It also talks a little bit about him (James Robson, the speaker) and gives you a link to contact them with any other information you might want to know. It was definitely pretty cool!
http://www.artasiagallery.com/ourmuseum.html
http://www.artasiagallery.com/ourmuseum.html
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