- These carved gourd ornaments are burned to give them the dark background shading.
- On top of that, floral and insect designs are carved and then painted with vibrant colors.
SPECIFICS:
- 2.5-3"
- Still contains its seeds inside
- Each piece is unique. Size, shape, and color vary.
- Assorted designs
The mate burilado (carved gourd) is made with a tool called buril –from which its name is derived– with which the craftsman or matero makes incisions on the gourd and then it is decorated by partially fire branding it on a stove made out of quinwual (a tree original form the Andes) tree branches. This technique is known as fire branding. On the other hand, the painted gourd is decorated with ink soaked brushes. When the gourd is decorated with a combination of styles, different materials are added to the decorations, such as semi-precious stones, marine shells, metals and other elements.
The gourd is a vegetable of great importance to Peruvian culture. At the start, the first ceramics of the wayra jirka style of the Kotosh culture, the craftsmen created vessels by copying the shapes on this vegetable.