Busacca Gallery

This is a lovely antique hand hammered Copper bowl. Antique Early 1800s Primitive Hand Hammered Solid Copper Pot bowl. Beautiful craftsmanship Mexican Indian, design. This old bowl is gorgeous!  It is definitely handmade.  The design and patina is just Beautiful – I’ve never seen anything like it. Copper was traditionally regarded as sacred by many historic period Eastern tribes. Copper nuggets are included in medicine bundles among Great Lakes tribes. Among 19th century Muscogee Creeks, a group of copper plates carried along the Trail of Tears are regarded as some of the tribe's most sacred items.   For generations the Indigenous peoples of North America pursued copper sources and transmitted the skill of copper’s manipulation and preparation as a special material for use in elite goods on to their descendants. Elites at major political and religious centers during the Mississippian period used copper ornamentation as a sign of their status by crafting the sacred material into representations connected with the Chiefly Warrior cult of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. These elites used a trade network that spanned most of North America to acquire exotic trade items from far away, trading their own locally manufactured elite goods and materials. * * All of the art is edited and chosen by us for its high quality and workmanship before posting. These collectibles have been selected with the artist & collector in mind. We are committed to enhancing our customer’s lives by discovering creating, and pointing out only the best art we can find in the world today. We Are Taste-Makers, Art Advisers, Consultants & Publishers Of Spectacular Art Stories. Our job is to be intermediaries between buyers and sellers. We are vetting for high end art patrons. We are determined to catalog the world's most exceptional art and share it with everyone.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippian_copper_plates

Although at the periphery of the Mississippian world, Florida has been the site of the discovery many S.E.C.C. associated copper artworks. Archaeologists believe that this is because of the busycon shell trade, the shells being a valuable ritual and high status trade good to Mississippian elites. It has even been proposed that the Fort Walton culture founders of the Lake Jackson Mounds Site moved east and founded the settlement in approximately 1100 CE to strategically position themselves in this trade network.



Many of the hundreds of copper plates found have not been specifically avian themed and come in a variety of other shapes. These include embossed geometric designs, weeping eye motifs, bi-lobed arrow motif headdresses, head shapes with headresses, and plain sheets.





Years of study by archaeologists, ethnologists and historians of artifacts of different materials found at many sites throughout the midwestern and southeastern United States has led many of these researchers to conclude that the cosmology associated with the avian imagery of this artwork originated at Cahokia (the largest Mississippian culture site, in western Illinois near St Louis, Missouri) between 1100 - 1300 CE. This cosmology was expressed as the "Braden style", a label applied to ceramics, shell pieces, stone statuary and copper artifacts all bearing the hallmarks and elements of the same sophisticated style. These pieces were exported to other centers where they were emulated by regional craftsman and became the basis of local styles, such as the "Craig style" of Spiro Mounds, the "Hightower style" of Etowah Mounds and the "Hemphill style" of Moundville.





Numerous examples of similar avian themed copper plates have been found in locations across the Midwest and Southeast, from the large cache found in Malden near the bootheel region in Dunklin County, Missouri to others from Mangum in Mississippi, Spiro in Oklahoma, Etowah in Georgia, Lake Jackson Mounds in Florida and other sites in Missouri, Illinois, and Alabama.





The researchers found that the metal had been repeatedly heated and cooled and while it was softened by the heat, had been hammered, a process known as annealing, similar to how blacksmiths work iron. They were also able to determine that the Cahokian coppersmiths had heated the copper in a wood fire to produce sufficient heat for this process. This process of heating and hammering was repeated over and over until a sheet of the desired thickness was obtained and was sufficient a method to allow the craftsman to work the copper into very thin sheets. Researchers have also tried different techniques to duplicate how larger pieces were manufactured. They determined that the larger pieces had not been laminated together but had most likely been riveted together with small copper knobs. Researchers were also able to determine that the artisans cut the copper into the desired shapes by bending the sheet metal back and forth until it broke in the desired location.



After the flat sheets of copper were produced, designs were then embossed into the surfaces probably with stone, bone or wooden tools. Frank Hamilton Cushing, an anthropologist working in the early 20th century, worked out a method for flattening and embossing the plates. He hammered raw nuggets of copper smooth and removed imperfections by scouring the surface with a piece of sandstone. He was then able to duplicate the avian designs by resting the sheet of copper on a rawhide pad and pressing into the surface using a piece of pointed deer antler and pressing with his chest. This produced a sharp thin line that when the plate was reversed resembled the embossed lines of the aboriginal artifacts. This process is considered to be roughly similar to how Mississippian coppersmiths probably worked.