The SERIES OF SHAMAN TILES created and designed by the workshop, was born in 2017 from my admiration for Peruvian pre-Inca art. In this pre-Columbian art, some incredible figures or characters were devised that represented magical or sacred beings that we can call sorcerers or Shamans.
In the Paracas peninsula in southern Peru, more than 400 mummified bodies wrapped with textiles arranged around the body, accompanied by offerings, were found in the necropolis of the peoples that inhabited it between 700 BC and 200 AD. These burial wraps contained several layers of cotton fabrics, followed by layers of rich embroidered mantles, all under a large outer wrap of fabrics forming an iconically shaped burial bundle.
The textiles were manufactured on large looms and made with cotton and wool threads of llama, alpaca and vicuña, in different colors from vegetable, animal and mineral dyes. These large robes between 2.50m and 1.30m still retain their vivid colors intact.
The people who embroidered and imagined these complex and enigmatic characters sought to express ideas about the continuity of life and death and the importance of ancestors.
These figures made in textile so many centuries ago serve as inspiration for their beauty and meaning to make this Series of Shamans.
These tiles faithfully reproduce the colorful figures created by pre-Inca culture and are decorated by hand using the"cuerda seca" (dry line) technique. The glaze after firing at 980ºC in the kiln gets shiny and smooth with relief.
The size of the tiles are 20cm x 15cm and made to be framed or glued to the wall. Different models of these figures are shown here but more shaman motifs are available. SEE DECORATIVE TILES CATALOG
These are custom made to the size and with the colors you want.
These tiles are glazed with colors specially prepared for this work that reproduce the chromaticism of the original figures, using more than twenty different tones.
The drawing is very complex and leaves small spaces for the application of color, in this work a great variety of different colors have been used to enhance all the details. Elaboration process. Profiling the drawing with manganese oxide and tiles with the glazes still raw before firing in the kiln.
Shamans, warriors and mythical beings as representation of characters in the process of shamanic transformation or mythical narratives, where animal features such as jaguar claws, mustaches or legs are acquired and the deceased becomes an ancestor of the community, they appear dressed in all the attributes of sacred animals such as the condor, hawk, jaguar, killer whale, and shark.
These shamans hold severed heads, axes or knives in their hands, heads also appear at the ends of the ribbons that come out of their bodies or at the edges of the robes and are adorned with a headdress and ceremonial clothes.
Fruits and plants can be identified as bean pods, symbols of abundant fertility.
Expressive eyes and mouth of this Shaman head.
The model tile «Flying Shaman» represents a sacred character or shaman floating in space that transports us to a magical world. Simple figure created by the pre-Inca Indians many centuries ago but which results in its tremendously current iconography in the XXI century.
These tiles try to faithfully reproduce these rich and luminous colors of the fabrics of the original figures with ceramic glazes.
