Shipibo jewellery - Peru
Of the Panoan language group, more than 30,000 Shipibo Indians live along the rivers and lakes in the Pucallpa region of the Peruvian selva central, a large percentage of them still proudly maintaining their independent tribal identity. They are specialists in fine crafts, much of the design inspired by contact with the spirit-world induced through shamanic use of teacher plants like ayahuasca. Their primary livelihood comes from forest gardens, fishing, hunting and gathering, but increasingly the distinctive and supposedly healing designs of their textiles, ceramics, gourds and wooden crafts are earning them a worldwide reputation as skilled artisans.
The source of inspiration for the complex, flowing and interlocking designs is claimed by a number of theories:
1. Each designs represents the unique sole of a Shipibo person (living or passed on)
2. The designs are given to Shipibo artists by nature spirits encountered on ayahuasca sessions. The songs sung during ayahuasca sessions are accompanied by parallel vibrating geometric visions, some of them seen as healing gifts from the spirit world, later transposed to the material world through the painting of the vision's design onto faces, whole bodies (especially sick ones), cloth, ceramics and, traditionally, even houses.
3. The wavy designs are claimed by some to be a map for the region's rivers.
4. The designs are also considered to be an ancient written linguistic form by a number of researchers.
5. They are also said to represent the patterns on the skins of anacondas (which links with point 2, above in the sense that anacondas or large colourful boas are often associated in the Amazon with the spirit of the ayahuasca plant itself and frequently seen during ayahuasca visionary sessions.
|
