Artefact: Curiously communicative, very old, teeny terracotta face on a V&A shelf
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In the V&A, on the fourth floor, in room 137, in cabinet 17, on shelf 7, is an oddball family of small terracotta pieces.
They are nothing like the rest of what’s in the ceramics cabinets. They are humble and mysterious. Each one would fit in my hand. Each one seems to seek a hand to hold them.
Some are from India, some are from Pakistan. The V&A dates them 1st to 3rd century AD, before ‘India’, before ‘Pakistan’.
My favourite of the bunch, a little disembodied head with finger prints for eyes, a gently pinched nose, incised nostrils and an incised mellow smile is just 2.6cm in height. Unassuming in form and scale, yet large in capacity to connect and intrigue.
Who made this?
What did they eat for breakfast that morning?
What was it like where they lived?
What’s the purpose of the head, the intention behind it?
And how did it get from its ancestral home to this shelf, this cabinet, this room this museum, this country?
Consulting the V&A catalogue, I see HEAD, as it is titled, was found in the Swat Valley at Sahri Bahlol in modern day Pakistan. The style is Gandhara.
Sahri Bahlol, now a UNESCO site, was a well fortified ancient Buddhist city dating back to the first two or three centuries AD. Gandhara denotes both a region and an ancient civilisation in what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan.
At the favourable, exciting, lucrative and often dangerous crossroads between India, Persia and China, the Swat Valley of Gandhara constantly saw invaders, traders, pilgrims, monks and travellers. Alexander the Great conquered the area, the Silk Road traversed it. There was prosperity. People settled, stupas and monasteries were built, there was organisation, defences, a thriving civilisation and a fertile valley. Trade enriched the region. Looking at the Gandhara collections at the Met Museum and British Museum, it feels confident, expressive, devout, ornate. A decorated place with an identity.
When HEAD was made, my maker probably did have a nice breakfast. Makers create little mirrors of their time and place. I hazard to guess that this maker had some skill, purpose & role to do with the Buddhist sites or travellers passing through.
Was this object something used for prayer?
The finger print eyes perhaps suggesting a state of meditation in which the senses recede and we feel content, smiling?
Was it a trinket from the monastery gift shop? Could many have been made, bought by travellers and scattered all around Europe and Asia, a gift for a beloved back home?
And who was D.H. Gordon who bequeathed HEAD to the V&A in 1961?
I do some digging on him, and find from the British Museum (where many objects from the same region list him & his wife in acquisition notes):
“Well-known soldier and archaeologist working for many years in colonial India, he collected, excavated and published widely”
I see he published a book and order a copy from France. I want to read his words and hear his voice.
Here’s the book and his dedication…an interesting start.
In terms of the impact of this on my own work, I am interested in symbols that are rich in meaning and simple in form. For example, water and moon shapes for the beads used in Unit 1 project.
P.S.
A couple Swat Valley Gandhara stupas. (I have long loved stupas and regularly draw them.)
REFERENCES:
Head: Unknown: V&A Explore The Collections
Museum
Buddhist Ruins of Takht-i-Bahi and Neighbouring City Remains at Sahr-i-Bahlol
Centre
Gandhara Civilization
Naveed
Collections Online: British Museum
Collections Online: British Museum
The prehistoric background of Indian culture
Gordon — Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers — 1997
Shingardar
Amluk Dara Stupa
Stupa
