Horns and pumpkins

The artisanal practice of carving, in Sardinia, can be extended to at least two other significant applications: hunting horns and pumpkins. In fact, from the widespread custom of wood carving, smaller but no less interesting areas develop, such as the case history of horn flasks, intended to contain gunpowder.
The artisanal practice of carving, in Sardinia, can be extended to at least two other significant applications: hunting horns and pumpkins. In fact, from the widespread custom of wood carving, smaller but no less interesting areas develop, such as the case history of horn flasks, intended to contain gunpowder. These, closed on the sides with cork, wood or metal, often precious, and completed by a suspension ring, have themes that are not necessarily focused on hunting, if anything, aimed at protecting the user from possible dangers, through complex subjects echoing sacred motifs or scenes. The processing is spread, in a full and continuous whole, over the entire surface, constituting the most valuable form of Sardinian artisanal carving, in a freedom of expression maintained, with a rare balance, between an archaic synthesis and narrative needs; to enhance manual skill, the flamboyant and pearlescent chromatic tone of the material is echoed. The carved pumpkins, used as beverage containers, whose production (which has survived today but with signs obtained with a pyrograph) can be framed between the end of the nineteenth century and the fifties of the twentieth century, have various dimensions and decorations with a studied and rich treatment. Not only the result of a pastoral pastime, the pumpkins were engraved with a knife and the subjects could be varied; the most unique are those drawn from the literature that the Sardinians, in times of scarcity of books and especially of illiteracy, learned and handed down by heart.

Update

6/9/2023 - 02:07