This was my first, and still my only, commissioned piece! I love saying that.
I went into this shop looking for a small wooden carving of a couple. A couple of weeks later I came out with this sculpture of Les Danseurs. It is rather large. I should clarify that I did not carry it home myself. I was on a work trip and the artist told me he would be done in 1 week. He was not and I had my flight out. Luckily, another colleague from the U.S. stayed behind and he generously picked it up and transported it. I was expecting a tchotke, not a sculpture. Sean had to buy it its own new gym bag to get it back. Thank you, Sean 🙂
In this photo, Les Danseurs is sitting on my fireplace mantel, taking up a good lot of space there. The fireplace is in the middle of the room, so you can see part of my living room behind it. (Sorry, I could not move it someplace more conducive to photograph it, as it’s secured down with museum putty, which you can see poking out from underneath the base). My cats are wild things and I did not need them knocking over this monster. Crash and goodbye. They have done it before.
My sculpture is quite the conversation piece. It was on my mantel in my last home and I had to clear all the other things off it. In my new home, my mantel is bigger so I am able to put a few small carvings on either side of the base. Like this one:
He is an Egyptian dog sculpture, about 4.5 inches high. I have an Egyptian cat on the other side. She is sitting upright – a bit taller and narrow.
I got the Les Danseurs sculpture in Haiti around 2007 and the Egyptian pair around 2009. I pack lighter and lighter as the years progress and I don’t typically buy anything bigger than my fist any more. A perfect example would be these cute little birds:
The terracotta pair is, well, terracotta I guess. I bought those in Peru. They are just under 2″ And the sweet little penguin is some type of stone. She is from an outdoor market in the square in Punta Arenas, Chile, where we landed after our sail around Cape Horn.
Light and cute and easy. I packed clothes around them, but at about $1-2 per piece, I wouldn’t be devastated if they do not make it home in one piece. These did :-D.
WhyTravel 