View allAll Photos Tagged funeraryrites
two figures lowering the coffin on ropes into the grave, a priest behind holding an asperge and pectoral cross, acolytes holding Holy Water beside him.
Pen and brown ink, c.1510-1530, Attributed to Aerdt Ortkens, Presumably a series of one of the seven acts of mercy.
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Portal românico da Igreja de Santa Marinha, em Moreira de Rei, Trancoso, caracterizado pelo arco de volta perfeita e colunas decoradas. Em primeiro plano, sepulturas antropomórficas escavadas na rocha, vestígios de um antigo cemitério medieval, refletindo práticas funerárias medievais ligadas ao templo. A disposição das sepulturas junto à igreja indica a importância religiosa do local e a crença na proximidade do sagrado como fator de proteção espiritual.
Kelabit megalith at the Sarawak Museum. The Kelabit people are a branch of the Orang Ulu whose home territory is in the highlands of northeastern Sarawak, near the border with Kalimantan, Indonesia. The Kelabit were animistic headhunters until the Second World War, when contact with the outside brought traders and missionaries who converted them to Anglican Christianity. Consequently, the meaning of these carved, funerary megaliths has largely been lost. (Brian K. Smith photo.)
Sarawak State Museum
Jalan Tun Abg Hj Openg
Kuching, Sarawak 93000
Tel: +60 (082) 244 232
First completed in 1891, the Sarawak State Museum is the oldest museum in Borneo. It was built on the orders of Charles Brooke, the second Rajah of Sarawak, modelled on the Queen Anne style town halls of Normandy, France. Brooke was encouraged by the naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, to create a museum to permanently house and display the local natural history and native arts & crafts. Today, the museum has expanded from this original building into a complex of exhibition halls, including the Aquarium, Art Museum, Islamic Museum, Natural History Museum, and Tun Abdul Razak Hall. This building currently functions as the Ethnology Hall, which includes a recreation of an Iban longhouse. (Brian K. Smith photo.)
Sarawak State Museum
Jalan Tun Abg Hj Openg
Kuching, Sarawak 93000
Tel: +60 (082) 244 232
*edit
The idea of transference of popular culture items isn't a new one in Asia. For centuries, Asian nations have been engaged in trade and exchanged ideas and knowledge. This Dragon Jar is a prime example of how a Chinese commercial good was appropriated by the Filipinos for an entirely different purpose than it was intended for. According to Wikipedia, "...elements, once removed from their indigenous cultural contexts, may take on meanings that are significantly divergent from, or merely less nuanced than, those they originally held. Or, they may be stripped of meaning altogether," when they are appropriated by a new culture. The social life of this Dragon Jar is a perfect testament to this phenomenon. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_appropriation]]
*end edit
This Dragon Jar seems to be a popular choice for these object lessons, but I can understand why. The social life of this object is pretty compelling and I'm guessing the curators of the exhibit of Filipino pottery agreed, showing the jar in a separate case in prominent view. Even the vessel itself is impressive to look at, with detailing of dragons on the sides, intricate detail around the rim and a beautiful caramel colored glaze.
The Dragon Jar was created in China as a shipping container, with pottery packed inside, for when the dishes were being traded abroad. This particular jar found its way to the Philippines, passing through the hands of traders and merchants and presumably emptied of its contents. No longer needed for shipping, but I imagine quite impressive to the Filipinos, so it's not a huge surprise that this beautiful jar was reused in funerary ritual. These jars were used as ancestral vessels, secondary coffins and also to brew beer for ceremonial purposes.
I find it interesting that an object that was only intended for commercial purposes took on such a sacred and intimate role after finding its way to the Philippines. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to house my loved ones' remains in a cardboard box shipped over from China, (not even if it was a really nice one, like an Hermes burnt-orange box). This makes me think that perhaps some enterprising merchant saw an opportunity and began to market these jars as funerary objects, and tried to disassociate them from their original context. They are beautiful, after all, and owning Chinese pottery, whether you used it or not (as was the case with the Chinese ink pot we also saw that was found in the Philippines) was a sign of status.
I am always a little uncomfortable viewing funerary objects in museum settings. If indeed this jar was used to house the remains of the dead, isn't it a bit imperialist to remove it from its 'home' and put it on display in one of our museums where it will be catalogued and stored away to collect dust on a shelf, and occasionally have college students write about it? Unearthing this jar and removing it from its home reminds me of the turn of the century Worlds Fairs, where people from around the world were brought in to act as physical specimens, displayed in an exhibit that mimicked their 'natural habitat' without concern for their individuality, intellects, dignity or values. While I understand the desire to understand the past and document it for posterity, I also believe that there are certain turns in an objects social life that are unethical and culturally imperialist, as seems to be the case with this Dragon Jar.
Burial hut (salong) and twin burial poles (kelirieng) at the Sarawak Museum. This was commissioned by a Kayan chieftain in Long Segaham to commemorate his young daughter who had suddenly died. It was about to be sold to an overseas collector, but the former director of the Sarawak Museum, Lucas Chin, persuaded the Kayan to donate it to the museum in 1973. (Brian K. Smith photo.)
Burial pole (kelirieng) and hut (salong) at the Sarawak Museum. The Kejaman, Punan, and Sekapan peoples traditionally bury their dead in these, erected in the forest. (Brian K. Smith photo.)
Sarawak State Museum
Jalan Tun Abg Hj Openg
Kuching, Sarawak 93000
Tel: +60 (082) 244 232
March 3, 1705 / 9:48 p.m. / Constantinople, Turkey / My ever heedful Gidiane, / ~~~If not Sant’Ignazio, then who?~~~ / Disfigured, rouged cheek troubled asudden below carmine upholstery. / Arsenical bloodstone cuff links, / espousal to the sunken oculus of an undercroft, Il Gesù, / aroused in cream and ebon funerary, / perturb of an undulate woe, / coagulated into baroque ornamentation, / disgorged of listless balustrades of quiescence, necrosis. / And there, amid the threshold of arcane, vaulted patronage, / whence copper frescoes embellished one cadaver torturously stirred among the heretics and cornices, / clamoring estranged in the alabaster night — / a gulping famish lurched — / tarnished of fealty, subterranean coffers; / the last jade requiem of curvature and courante — / For absorbed entirely within the gangrenous carcass of this nameless man, / was someone contrarily purported, / who, anywise, fell into disrepair over the fetid breath within him. / Suitably, / Birol / If not Sant’Ignazio, then who?, an excerpt from Ιερά Γράμματα από τη Μεσόγειο: A Catalogue of Spells / © Copyright 2015 Seraphime Angelis, All Rights Reserved. / sometimesbrandthe.blogspot.com /
#baroquepoetry #enchantment #classicart #womenwritersofinstagram #fantasy #wordsmith #funeraryrites #gothicpoetry #poetry #igpoets #literature #elizabethanpoetry #lovepoetry #lovespells #macabre #magick #mausoleum #shakespeare #periodverse #renaissancepoetry #romanticpoetry #spiritualism #modernenglish #spilledink #catalogueofspellscifnotsantignazio #sacredletters #witchcraft #seraphimeangelis #baroquepoetry
~~~Constantinople~~~ / Majesties of ebonmost cabal / pray Gothic in corners of your Malfeasance / Delegates of finer sense / effect Art through inclination, / esteem / Minares stand rich, / perfidy yet woven / of tapestries drunk deep / in piquant Amethyst, Garnet, Pearl / Now one Mosaic, / this artifice of ages, / laced grim atop tombs / of sinless Poets, / caprice, / gossamered ornaments of the Feint. / Russet hues Treason, / come Autumn’s folding, / and into the mouth of torch-lickers, / Illuyankas, / whence half-moon engravings / beribbon ceilings azure / and stone colonnades / scrape Celestial Bowels / amid buttress of histories / peppered with anguish / cunning / and Power. / Bazaars in your tenet, / chariots amber Debauch, / evermore baiting, / labyrinthine, august / O Byzantium Vamp! / of a starless chasm / or vague along seam / of the darkening Black, / gorged in elusory Spectres ignoble, / wrought from the ashen lore / conjure of devils / elapsed and / bedimmed folkways / of Hallowed / Men. / ~~~Constantinople, an excerpt from Ιερά Γράμματα από τη Μεσόγειο: A Catalogue of Spells / © Copyright 2016 Seraphime Angelis, All Rights Reserved. / sometimesbrandthe.blogspot.com
#baroquepoetry #enchantment #classicart #womenwritersofinstagram#wordsofinstagram #fantasy #wordsmith #funeraryrites #gothicpoetry #poetry #igpoets #literature #elizabethanpoetry #lovepoetry #lovespells #macabre #magick #mausoleum #shakespeare #periodverse #renaissancepoetry #romanticpoetry #spiritualism #modernenglish #spilledink #catalogueofspellsconstantinople #sacredletters #witchcraft #seraphimeangelis #baroquepoetry
March 3, 1705 / 9:48 p.m. / Constantinople, Turkey / My ever heedful Gidiane, / ~~~If not Sant’Ignazio, then who?~~~ / Disfigured, rouged cheek troubled asudden below carmine upholstery. / Arsenical bloodstone cuff links, / espousal to the sunken oculus of an undercroft, Il Gesù, / aroused in cream and ebon funerary, / perturb of an undulate woe, / coagulated into baroque ornamentation, / disgorged of listless balustrades of quiescence, necrosis. / And there, amid the threshold of arcane, vaulted patronage, / whence copper frescoes embellished one cadaver torturously stirred among the heretics and cornices, / clamoring estranged in the alabaster night — / a gulping famish lurched — / tarnished of fealty, subterranean coffers; / the last jade requiem of curvature and courante — / For absorbed entirely within the gangrenous carcass of this nameless man, / was someone contrarily purported, / who, anywise, fell into disrepair over the fetid breath within him. / Suitably, / Birol / If not Sant’Ignazio, then who?, an excerpt from Ιερά Γράμματα από τη Μεσόγειο: A Catalogue of Spells / © Copyright 2015 Seraphime Angelis, All Rights Reserved. / sometimesbrandthe.blogspot.com /
#baroquepoetry #enchantment #classicart #womenwritersofinstagram #fantasy #wordsmith #funeraryrites #gothicpoetry #poetry #igpoets #literature #elizabethanpoetry #lovepoetry #lovespells #macabre #magick #mausoleum #shakespeare #periodverse #renaissancepoetry #romanticpoetry #spiritualism #modernenglish #spilledink #catalogueofspellscifnotsantignazio #sacredletters #witchcraft #seraphimeangelis #baroquepoetry