Folk Painting

Nude female holding monkeys

Decorative Painting

Figure

Square

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A print on yellowed paper depicts a seated woman in a flowered kimono painting willow fronds onto a screen that fills the upper left corner of the image. Painting implements litter the space near her. 

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The Learned Courtesan in Edo Japan

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A landscape-oriented, black and white photograph of a nuclear bomb being detonated in the South Pacific, off the coast of the Marshall Islands.

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Art of the Atomic Bomb

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A Gandharan sculpture of the goddess, Hariti, seated and holding a child in her left arm. Her right hand, now partially destroyed is raised in a mudra. She is robed and wears barcelets, anklets necklaces and large earrings. 

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Goddess Hariti: The Joy and Terror of Childbirth

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A 12th century fragment of Shaikh al-Husain ibn Abdallah ibn al-Hasan's tombstone, inscribed in Arabic Kufic calligraphy. The center is carved to resemble a mihrab with arabesque designs surrounding it.

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Honoring the Dead: Funerary Ornamentation and Ritual in Islam  

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A round vessel in the shape of a male turkey.

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How Chocolate Reached the Eastern Hemisphere

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Painted in loose and rapid brushstrokes, a woman wearing a white dress sits in front of her mirror. She adjusts her hair which is in an updo. Flowers and a glass jar sit on a small table beside her.

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Women’s Reflections in Renaissance and Modern European Painting 

Tsuba with a Hawk, Sparrows and Chrysanthemums

Pair of Sword-Grip Ornaments (Menuki)

Sword Guard (<i>Tsuba</i>) Depicting Eagle Preying on Monkey (猿捕食猛禽図鐔)

Sword Guard (Tsuba)

Tsuka with Horse, Gourd and Rooster

Tsuba with One Hundred Monkeys

Tsuba with Deer Caught in a Storm

For more than a thousand years, Japanese sword makers crafted a rich vocabulary of practical and decorative elements. Swordsmiths outfitted samurai, feudal Japan’s elite fighting and administrative class. Master swordsmiths, often presiding over esteemed workshops, fashioned the sword blades. Then, they commissioned other craftspeople to create the sword’s additional elements. Two of these elements are menuki and tsuba. Menuki are pairs of ornaments, resembling brooches, that help the user grip the sword. Sword makers originally developed menuki to cover the nails (mekugi) on a sword’s hilt (tsuka). Tsuba are guards that separate the hilt of the sword from the blade. Tsuba originated as early as the third century CE as simple iron rings that kept the user’s hand from slipping. Eventually, sword makers began crafting ornamental tsuba and menuki made of gold, silver, copper, and other precious metals. Their details are meticulous and playful, depicting nature scenes, popular stories, and abstract designs. Today, museums often collect menuki and tsuba as standalone objects, separate from their original blades. This collection features tsuba and menuki from the 1600s–1900s. It highlights the delightful, often comical use of animal imagery in these small masterpieces. Japanese myth is full of animals, each with their own symbolic meaning. This meaning was often a reflection of their place in the zodiac. The lively, strikingly detailed animals portrayed on swords also reflect the long tradition of Japanese artists drawing on the natural world. Sometimes fierce, sometimes funny, the querulous monkeys, beneficent elephants, and mighty crustaceans that scamper across these objects likely accompanied warriors into battle—and lived to tell the tale.

The Playful Menageries of Menuki and Tsuba

Pair of Akuaba Figures Seated on a Stool

Pair of Akuaba Figures

Fertility Doll  (Akuaba)

Fertility Doll (Akuaba)

Female Figure (akua'ba)

The Akan peoples, including the Asante, Fante, and other groups in current-day Ghana, are matrilineal. Akan people share a powerful legend about fertility. A woman named Akua wanted to conceive a daughter, but was not able to. She approached a diviner, a spiritual practitioner, for help. The diviner told her to have a carver make her a wooden figure, and to care for this carving as though it was a real child. Soon after, Akua conceived and then gave birth to a baby girl. 

Thereafter, Akan women began to commission wooden akua ba—literally “child of Akua”—figures as fertility aids. Akua ba have breasts and other features representing idealized young women’s beauty. Their high, oval foreheads indicate the practice of cranial shaping of newborns. The rings of fat around the necks signify prosperity and fertility.[1] The figures are female, reflecting the Akua myth and Akan matrilineal culture.[2]

The figures are flat to enable women to carry them on their backs like infants. Women who commission akua ba figures offer them symbolic food and honor them at the family altar. If women conceive, they offer the akua ba figure to a nearby shrine to honor the spirits who aided them, or give them to a family member also trying to have a baby.[3]

Since the early 20th century, the form of akua ba changed as they became increasingly prized on the tourist market. Artists began to make more naturalistic figures, carving distinct legs where they would previously have included only pedestals. As tourist souvenirs, akua ba are divorced from their original context. Many Westerners have come to see them as generalized symbols of Africa rather than the spiritually powerful and emotionally charged objects they are.[4] Some 21st century Akan women continue to use akua ba as fertility aids, but the practice is slowly disappearing.[5]

This collection includes examples of akua ba from Fante and Asante makers. They date from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Citations

[1] “Female Fertility Figurine (akuaba).” The Met, www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/312279. Accessed 18 March 2022.  

[2] Klemm, Peri. “Akua’ba Female Figure (Akan peoples).” Khan Academy, www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-africa/west-africa/ghana/a/akuaba-female-figure-akan-peoples. Accessed 18 March 2022.

[3] “Female Figure (akua’ba).” The Cleveland Museum of Art, www.clevelandart.org/art/1975.158. Accessed 18 March 2022.

[4] Klemm. 

[5] Kushiator,G., Rahman, A., and Ofori, D.H. “The Influence of Western Culture on Traditional Art Forms and Cultural Practices: ‘Akuaba’ Doll Among Akan Women in Africa.” Adrri Journal of Arts and Social Sciences, vol. 17 no. 6, July 2020, https://journals.adrri.org/index.php/adrrijass/article/download/543/518. Accessed 20 April 2022.

Akuaba 

Maize Deity

Head of Xilonen, the Goddess of Young Maize

Cup with Profile Head of the Maize God

Life-Death Figure

Ceremonial Metate

Ceremonial Grinding Table (Metate) in the Form of a Feline

Vessel, Hand with Kero

Young Corn Deity

Mask

Celt with Incised Profile

Ancient Mesoamerican people were the first to domesticate maize.[1] Maize cultivation spread throughout North and South America. Many peoples of Mesoamerica, such as the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec, worshiped powerful maize gods and spirits. These deities maintained the agricultural cycles of germination, maturity, death, and rebirth.[2] The objects in this collection either depict maize deities or are spiritually associated with corn. Maize gods embodied diverse aspects of corn. The Aztec had several maize deities representing different stages in corn’s life cycle. These include Xilonen, the beautiful goddess of young maize, and Chicomecoatl, the god of mature, ripened maize. An artist carved an image of the Olmec corn god on a 10th-century jade ax, which itself represented a new shoot of corn. A Mayan sculpture from the 8th century depicts the maize god living inside an ear of maize. Corn-related ceremonies continue to mark yearly cycles of fertility for many people of this region.[3] However, in the modern era, maize has become a commodified crop. Corporations increasingly claim new maize varieties as intellectual property. They deny Indigenous people sovereignty over their traditional food source.[4] In contrast, images of Mesoamerican maize gods remind modern readers of the profound spiritual connection between people and the crops they cultivated—and which shaped them through centuries of sustenance. 

Maize Gods and Fertility Spirits

Cat Coffin

Sarcophagus and Cat Mummy

Cat Mummy

Two cats surmounting a box for an animal mummy

Cat with kittens on damaged box for animal mummy

Cat Coffin with Mummy

Cat Mummy in Cartonnage

Sacred animal mummy of a cat

Cat Statuette intended to contain a mummified cat

Box for animal mummy surmounted by a cat, inscribed

Ancient Egyptians revered certain animals as embodiments of deities. They honored cats as living avatars of the goddess Bastet, who was associated with the sun, childbirth, and fertility.[1] Bastet originated as a fierce lioness goddess in Lower Egypt. Eventually, worshipers came to regard Bastet as a friendly deity. Ancient Egyptians depicted Bastet as either a cat or as a woman with the head of a cat.

Ancient Egyptians created millions of animal mummies.[2] Some of these, including cats, dogs, gazelles, and monkeys, were beloved pets mummified along with an owner so they could stay together in the afterlife.[3] Others were mummified as spiritual offerings. 

Cat mummies were particularly popular because of their association with Bastet.[4] Some religious compounds kept cats for the purpose of sacrifice and mummification. Worshipers could pay to have a cat mummified as a way of gaining spiritual favor. When archaeologists excavated Bastet’s main temple at Bubastis (modern-day Zagazig), they uncovered over 300,000 mummified cats.[5]

Cat mummification became a profitable business for temples.[6] Archaeologists have used x-rays to discover that some mummies that appeared to be cats were actually filled with stones, dirt, or spare bones. This either represented a lucrative temple scam played on worshipers or a symbolic mummification that offered devotees a bargain option to make an offering. 

This collection contains mummified cats, cat coffins, and at least one cat-shaped mummy filled with nothing at all.


CITATIONS

[1] “Bastet.” Wikipedia, 11 March 2022, ​​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastet. Accessed 31 March 2022.

[2] “Sarcophagus and Cat Mummy.” Brooklyn Museum, https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/4184. Accessed 31 March 2022.

[3] “Animal Mummy.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_mummy. Accessed 31 March 2022.

[4] “Mummified Cat.” The Walters, https://art.thewalters.org/detail/38882/cat-mummy-2/. Accessed 31 March 2022.

[5] “Bastet.”

[6] “Mummified Cat.” The Walters, https://art.thewalters.org/detail/21582/cat-mummy/. Accessed 31 March 2022. 





Mummified Cats.

Gourd-Shaped Snuff Bottle with a Butterfly, Trailing Tendrils, and Fruit Branches

Carved white jade leaf cluster ornament

Snuff Bottle in the Shape of an Eggplant

Two Monkeys on Two Peaches

Lotus-Leaf Dish

Carved white jade leaf for bowl and stand

Carved white jade flower form bowl and cover with stand

Bottle in the shape of a gourd

Vase

Ancient Chinese people believed jade could confer immortality. They obtained nephrite, one of the two minerals geologists call jade, from Turkestan and Siberia. In modern times, they also obtained jadeite from southeast Asia. Chinese scholars associated jade with courtly virtues including integrity, persistence, and moral purity.[1] 

In the Qing Dynasty, when most of the jade objects in this collection were made, artists carved particularly elaborate jade forms. They employed tools and abrasives to impart ornate designs on the extremely hard stone.[2] Depictions of fruit, flowers, and vegetables were popular. 

Plant varieties hold spiritual meanings within Daoism and Buddhism. The lotus symbolizes spiritual growth from the mud of worldliness to the blossom of enlightenment.[3] The peach symbolizes immortality.[4] The gourd represents a wish for numerous offspring.[5]

Jade ranges in color from brilliant apple green to subtle grayish blue to pure white. Artists took advantage of this natural tonal variation to create startlingly lifelike vegetation. Their seemingly miraculous skill transformed an unyielding material into juicy lettuce leaves, plump peaches, and translucent lotus blossoms.

CITATIONS

[1] Lyons, Elizabeth. “Chinese Jades.” Penn Museum, 1978, https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/chinese-jades/. Accessed 16 April 2022. 
 
[2] “Chinese Jades.” 
  
[3] “Lotus.” Philadelphia Museum of Art, https://www.philamuseum.org/collection/object/318939. Accessed 26 April 2022. 

[4] Sun, Jason. “Chinese Hardstone Carvings.” The Met, June 2016, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/hard/hd_hard.htm. Accessed 16 April 2022.  

[5] Howard, Samantha, “Myth and Magic in the East Asian Ivory and Jade Collections.” Text modified by Glenn Roadley. The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, 2 May 2021, https://www.stokemuseums.org.uk/pmag/myth-and-magic-in-the-east-asian-ivory-and-jade-collections/. Accessed 16 April 2022.    



Fruit, Flowers, and Vegetables in Chinese Jade.

Fragment of Mawa' or Ma'a (Sacred Heirloom Textile)

Painted Textile Depicting Celestial Musicians

Long Cloth

Patolu with Elephant Design

Palampore

Quilt or Carpet

The oldest archaeological evidence of dyed fabrics in India dates back to 2500 BCE.[1] In Southeast Asia, traders along the Maritime Silk Road exchanged Indian textiles for precious spices.[2] Indonesians particularly treasured Indian textiles, passing them down as family heirlooms imbued with spiritual meaning. Before the 1500s, Europeans largely relied on Persian and Arab intermediaries for luxury goods from Asia. In the 1490s, the Portuguese sailed around the Cape of Good Hope to establish the first direct sea route between Europe and Asia. Dutch traders quickly followed. The Dutch government chartered the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC) in 1602. For almost two centuries, the VOC traded, massacred, and plundered its way to dominance of the global spice trade. This collection includes a sample of Indian fabrics from the 14th to the 18th century. The oldest, a piece of dyed 14th- or 15th-century Gujarati cotton fabric found in Indonesia, predates Dutch colonialism. Others were commissioned or traded by the VOC. The collection includes examples of kalamkari and patolu techniques, as well as lightweight cotton chintz. The textiles display a combination of Indian, Indonesian, and European designs meant for various external markets, reflecting the trade influences of the era.

Spice Trade Collection 4: Indian Textiles on the Maritime Silk Road

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