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Spoon with Bird
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
There seems to be a link between Chavín religion and appearance of the Andes’ first large precious-metal objects, made using revolutionary new metallurgical processes. Chavín may have developed these technical innovations to express the inexpressible, the "wholly other" nature of its religion. In many areas, elite men and women wore the ornaments as emblems of their ties to this religion, and eventually were buried with them. These 16 objects, along with three others not in the museum’s collection, are said to have come as a group from Chavín itself.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineSpoon with Bird, c. 500–200 BCE. Peru, North Highlands, Chavín de Huantar(?), Chavín style. Hammered and cut gold; overall: 2.6 cm (1 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Tishman, 1958.178
