Stone Elephant
Guiding Questions:
Looking at the following images, do you see yourself trying to figure out what the other parts of the fragments are to understand where it came from? Or do you agree with the repair that was made by the museum? This requires creating an image of the object and inferring what the repair may be. This is important to do especially when trying to figure out the history and context behind some of these Middle Ages objects.
About this Elephant:
This object is a type of stoneware and is a brown and cream glazed figure of an elephant, with the remains of a rider and warriors. It is made in Sawankhalok in Asia during the 14th century and is 31.5 cm in length. Parts of the elephants legs, the base, and even the warrior near the leg of the elephant were added later to repair the fragmented elephant (British Museum 2016). This means that the elephant that is visible here is likely not the full picture of the elephant that originally existed. For example, on the parts of the elephant that are surviving, you can see various patterns throughout the object. However, on the legs, the preservationists are essentially forced to have very minimalist designs which just give the rest of the object support. As a result, they likely do not capture the full spirit of the original object. However, this does not mean that this was not worthwhile. Had they not added these artificial elements, the object would not be able to stand, and would just look like a broken piece. Through this work, a viewer can at least get a sense for the size and proportions of this object. Interestingly enough, they add many details to the riders remains as well as the warrior on the leg, which makes us wonder whether there were partial remains of these figures on the fragmented elephant that made them repair it to the way it is.
Therefore, although we can create new art through the loss of the original form through these repairs, we must be careful when evaluating the final product since it is hard to know what is actually on the original object. Interestingly enough, the elephant, after all the repair, is still missing a tusk, which brings up many questions. Why did the curator decide to repair everything except for the tusk that we can easily imagine? This is an interesting object to try to understand how a curator goes about creating new art by inference after the loss of the original form.