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Artifacts for the Earth, The Collection:

David Abram's Rice Boat
This story comes by way of David Abram, a magician, ecologist, and philosopher - author of The Spell of the Sensuous. Abram was visiting Indonesia to study the relationship between magic and healing. During a stay with a magician and his wife in the interior of Bali, he had a curious experience. He had been given a small room in their family compound for sleeping and in the morning Abram’s hostess brought a small, delicious bowl of fruit to him at his hut. He leaned against the hut enjoying his fruit and watching the morning sun through the rustling palm leaves. When his hostess delivered the morning fruit bowl, he noticed that she also had a tray full of small green plates. They were little boat-shaped platters, woven simply and neatly from fresh palm fronds. Each little boat was two or three inches long and had a little mound of white rice sitting in it. The tray of little rice-boats disappeared with Abram’s hostess, and when she returned to pick up Abram’s empty fruit bowl, the tray in her hands was empty.

The second time Abram saw the tray of little rice-boats, he asked what they were for. His hostess patiently explained to him that they were offerings for the household spirits. His hostess disappeared with the tray and Abram pondered while he began to eat his bowl of sliced papaya and mango. Then he set down his bowl and stepped to the side of his hut, peering through the trees to watch his hostess. He saw her crouched at the corner of one of the other huts, carefully setting one of the offerings on the ground. She then proceeded to set another little rice-boat, slowly and carefully, at the other corner of the building. Abram returned to his hut to finish his breakfast. Later that afternoon, while his hosts were busy, he walked back to where he had seen her set the two rice-boats. The two little green palm platters rested neatly at the corners where she had set them, but the mounds of rice they had carried were gone. The next morning, Abram ate his bowl of fruit, waited for his hostess to return for his empty bowl, and then quietly walked behind the huts. He saw two fresh rice boats at the same corners of the building. Abram says, “Yet as I gazed at one of these offerings, I abruptly realized, with a start, that one of the rice kernels was actually moving.” Then Abram knelt down to look closer and noticed a line of tiny black ants winding through the dirt towards the offering. Peering even closer, he saw two ants on top of the mound of rice that were struggling with the kernel of rice on top. One of the ants carried the kernel down off the mound and set off with it, back along the trail of ants. The second ant carried another kernel down, dragging it and pushing it, until the ant fell over the edge of the palm boat with it and continued back through the dirt along the ant trail. Ants continued to crawl up onto the offering and carry away the kernels of rice. Abram discovered that the trail of ants emerged from the top of a little mound of dirt about fifteen feet away from the buildings. Then he noticed rice-boats on the corners of his hut too, with the same lines of ants. Abram walked back into his room chuckling to himself: “the balian and his wife had gone to so much trouble to placate the household spirits with gifts, only to have their offerings stolen by little six-legged thieves. What a waste!” “But then,” Abram says, “a strange thought dawned on me; what if the ants were the very ‘household spirits’ to whom the offerings were being made?”

Abram soon learned that the family compound had been built in an area with several ant colonies. Due to the large amounts of cooking that took place on the compound, it was especially vulnerable to ant infestations. The invasions could range from occasional small nuisances to constant siege. The daily rice offerings served to prevent an attack by the ants. The offerings were placed at regular, repeated locations at the corners of various buildings in the compound, and they seemed to establish certain boundaries between the human and ant communities.

 

Watershed Tea Bowl
Tea pours from a spout into the watershed tea bowl just like the rain pours into a real watershed on the Oregon coast. If I let my memory fill the topographical lines mapping the inside, I can sense pines and spruces, salmon and a beaver, earthworms and river rocks. Each sip is like the place where Crowley Creek flows through the estuary and enters the Pacific Ocean. To drink from such a bowl is a practice in place-making; it grounds me. This fragile tea bowl also requires that I take care – that I hold it gently, keeping the land from fracturing into shards. If I pay close attention to it, it can be an everyday reminder that I live in a watershed. I am grateful for this water-receiving landscape and my community is responsible for its health. Perhaps you’d like to meet me along the creek to share a pot?

After crafting this tea bowl, I decided to do a little digging to see if I could find anything similar out there, past or present. Touristy map mugs aside (which probably separate us from place more than connect us to it), I found this old Chinese map tea bowl on eBay. I don't know anything about it except that it is beautiful. I wonder where it is of and who made it and why. Who drank tea out of this and did it root them into the land?

 

Redwood Moss Clothes Tag
I found this old clothes tag in an antique store in Arcata, California a few years ago. My first response was "gorgeous!" But why? It is shiny and silky and crisp, but most importantly, this clothes tag honors place in a beautiful way, putting to shame most of today's clothes tags that simply say "Made in _____ " with nothing more. This tag comes from a woolen mill that used to operate in Eureka, a town in Northern California, just south of Arcata and about a hundred miles from the Oregon border. It is difficult to see in the image above, but the yellow diamond at the bottom says "Eureka" inside of it. Redwoods fill the landscape of the northern California coast, dripping with moss just like the tiny green stitches on the tree in the tag. The text is raised and almost seems to be stitched of moss itself. Humorously, they included the word "type" under the word "moss," as to not make us think that the woolen article was actually made of real moss collected from trees! And yet, I must admit, if this woolen mill was still in operation, I would certainly be hoping they made a coat - or perhaps trousers - in this bright wet green shade. I would tromp around town and woods imagining that I am indeed dripping with moss just like the redwoods. The word "fleece" on the tag is also interesting - more interesting now than then. While many of us today think of "fleece" as the fuzzy synthetic fabric made from oil (or sometimes recycled plastic bottles), a "fleece" used to be the name for a large piece of wool sheered from a sheep. And while the word "genuine" is tossed around left and right today in an attempt to make one product appear better than another, here I feel that the word actually means something - is indeed genuine itself. This tag combines words and images that swirl together to create a meaningful interaction with the wearer of the garment. In fact, the top curve of the letter "R" in "Redwood" is curling behind the trunk of the redwood tree, hinting at the way language and the land are connected.

The Eureka Woolen Manufacturing Co. was built in 1881, essentially founding the town of Eureka. Its site was along the West Branch of the East River, situated in a hollow. It was water-powered and full of pulleys and belts. To my great surprise, domestic wools were not used in the beginning; wool was imported from the Cape of Good Hope and Australia. I suppose the "Made in California" on the label is not entirely true afterall. (It was a nice daydream though...) By 1888 they were also making tweeds and homespuns for the country trade, offering cloth in exchange for local wool. They wove 6,000 lbs. of domestic wool and 2,500 lbs. of Australian wool per month. By 1912, they were using even more domestic wool. In 1915, following the declaration of war, the mill knitted underwear for soldiers. The day after shipping off this order, a fire caught in the carding room and the mill was in ashes in just a few hours. This was the end of the mill in Eureka, as the company moved to Windsor, Nova Scotia because of incentives offered by the town.

Here is a contemporary clothes tag that also connects us to the earth more than most, with an image of the earth emerging from a cotton blossom. This tag is from a shirt manufactured by the company, Patagonia:

I designed a clothes tag meant to honor the people and places behind the making of clothes. You can participate in my Changing Clothes tag exchange program.

 

Snowshoe Ice Cream Plate
This fabulous ice cream plate is in the collection of the White House dishes at the Concord Museum in Concord, Massachusetts. It is from the White House of Rutherford, B. Hayes (1877-81). Despite its remarkable tackiness, it is conceptually beautiful. With a curling birch bark background, it showcases a native, handcrafted snowshoe. Imagine eating vanilla ice cream in this dish, with the scoops of it melting down onto the surface of the plate like a fresh layer of snow. As you eat, the snowshoe slowly appears, with small pools of melted ice cream in between the twisted ropes – as if you had just taken a step.

 

Soap Saver
This depression-era utensil - called a soap saver - is a lovely example of thrift and using materials until their very end. You know all those little end bits of bars of soap that are too difficult to wash with? Well, you'd just put them all in the little basket and whisk it around in a tub of water to make soapy water for washing dishes. Genius!