New year, new blog post. Welcome to January! This month I’ve been studying the Purépecha people of Mexico, focusing on the time period between 810 CE and 1500 CE.
RESEARCH
For my research, I needed to bring in the experts: I consulted Golden et al.’s Polities, Boundaries, and Trade in the Classic Period Usumacinta River Basin as well as Pollard and Cahue’s “Mortuary Patterns of Regional Elites in the Lake Patzcuaro Basin of Western Mexico” to give me a better idea of how the Purépecha (members of the Tarascan Empire) used ceramics. Both papers offered an archeological perspective and shed light on some interesting practices from this culture. For example, Charles Golden’s team encountered a number of ceramic beads that had been painted to mimic jade, evidence that ceramic beads were involved in displays of wealth. Pollard and Cahue also had interesting findings concerning the Purépecha’s elites: wealthy graves of women and children tended to contain more ceramic beads than other demographics. These ceramics were often adorned with black, white, blue, and/or red painted designs.
After reading these papers, I set off to find more reference photos so that I could start drafting my bead designs. The Museum of Natural and Cultural History in Oregon provided my personal favorite reference: this ceramic necklace with figure charms. If you’re interested in the rest of the references I used, you can find them listed under “January” on my “Gallery” page!
MAKING THE BEADS
After all of my background research, I was ready to start making my beads. I drafted my idea for the string of beads with the goal of representing the Purépecha people as a whole as well as trying to recreate the same kinds of beads that they used.
The jade effigy beads, figure charm, simple round beads, and spiral beads originate from the Purépecha themselves, but I also wanted to include an homage to the colorful Tarascan glaze-work. The largest beads on the string are meant to represent some of the colors and designs typical for the time and place.
At the time of posting, I’ve finished molding all of the beads (shown below) and I’m just waiting for them to be fired before I start glazing. I’ve definitely learned a lot about this process already, and I can’t wait to see how my first beads will turn out!
Carpe Lutum!