Friday, August 12, 2016

The Silahis 14

I can’t afford to buy the limestone burial jars that are for sale and then donate them to the province of Sultan Kudarat or any of the municipalities in Kulaman Plateau, so I’ll just keep track of them. Hopefully, they will all find their way back home. Below are the jars that are on display in Silahis Arts and Artifacts, located at 744 Calle Real del Palacio (General Luna), Intramuros, Manila.



1—This quadrangular jar has V-shaped and diamond patterns on the sides. The lid is shaped like a gable, but half of the top part is cut off to give way to a tiny figure of a head. The eyes, nose, and mouth of the figure are excavated.
2—This conical jar is flat at the base and has vertical flutings around the body. The lid is circular and flat at the base, which supports a knob that looks like an inverted drinking glass.
3— This quadrangular jar has V-shaped patterns on the sides. The lid is shaped like a gable. The surface of the jar and the lid is brown probably from being buried in dirt. Some parts are black, as if exposed to smoke.
4—This jar is shaped like a box with uneven and vague vertical flutings. The lid is shaped like a gable and has parallel vertical flutings. The body of the jar looks newer than the lid. It is in fact so white and shiny that I suspect it’s just a few decades old at most.
5—This quadrangular jar has a clean surface and rough in some parts. The lid is smooth, shaped like a pyramid, and has triangular drawings; one corner of it, however, is missing.
6—This boxlike jar is slightly smaller at the base. The sides have diamond designs. The lid is quadrangular and flat with a bas-relief of a carabao head, which is highly unusual, for none of the burial jars that were excavated by anthropologists in 1960s has a carving of an animal in the lid. Some of the anthropomorphic figures look like animals, but they’re obviously meant to be not purely animal. I doubt if this item has really been used as a burial jar. The surface is clean and smooth all over. Modern tools must have been used in carving the stone.
7—This small jar looks like a big vase. It has no lid. The surface is decorated by deep diagonal cuts that look like lines of dashes. Each cut is oblong and tapers on both ends.
8—This boxlike jar is smaller at the base and has a wide mouth. The lid is shaped like a gable topped with a short, wide, and rectangular handle. The surface is brown from dirt and doesn’t have any geometric designs.
9—This quadrangular jar goes wider as it goes higher. The lid is square and flat. The surface doesn’t have any geometric designs. This must be the most minimalist jar I’ve ever seen.
10—This short cylindrical jar has vertical flutings. The lid is shaped like an inverted bowl and has a small figure of a human head on top.
11—This cylindrical jar has wide vertical flutings. The lid has a circular lower half and a gable-shaped upper half.
12—This conical jar is flat at the base and has shallow vertical flutings. The lid is circular, flat, and has flutings from the center to the sides.
13—This quadrangular jar has vertical and arrow-like flutings on the sides. The lid is square, flat, and topped with a short cylinder that has vertical flutings.
14—This quadrangular jar has diamond-shaped carvings all over, including the gable-shaped lid.

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