The pet complex in the genes of civilization
Gourd carving is becoming the best emotional carrier due to its natural biophilic properties (natural materials, organic forms). Custom pet portraits with gourds carry the love, blessings and companionship between us and our pets!
Italian glass sculptor Marco’s statement at the Venice Biennale is quite revealing: “When I use Murano glass to shape my pets, I always feel that there is a lack of life temperature until I meet the Chinese gourd – those naturally growing textures are clearly God’s manuscripts.” This common aesthetic of organic materials gives gourd carving an inherent advantage in cross-cultural communication.
Custom pet portraits, sentimental gourds around the world
At the Istanbul Pet Festival, a blue-eyed cat gourd pendant carved by Turkish artisans using the Chinese liuqing technique, which skillfully incorporates the devil’s eye totem, sold 300 pieces in a single day. The gourd protects my Simit (the cat’s name) and continues my grandmother’s tradition of using the gourd for catnip,” said buyer Aylin.
Australian animal protection organization Paws Across Oceans has a more meaningful public service project: they invited Aboriginal artists to carve pet portraits up for adoption on gourds, and these “pettable adoption resumes” have boosted adoption rates by 65%. A professor at the University of Sydney commented, “The tactile dimension of the gourd awakens the nurturing instinct in humans in a way that a flat photograph cannot.”
From the banks of the Nile to the banks of the Mississippi, the stories of pets engraved on the surface of the gourd by mankind are woven into the map of a new civilization. A New Yorker columnist wrote after playing with the “Zodiac Pet Gourds” created by the Forbidden City, “In this age of uncertainty, these artifacts with body heat let us touch the certainty of civilization again – the love of life is always the greatest common language of mankind.” When the morning light sweeps over the American apprentices carving corgi gourds in the Brooklyn studio, we see not only the inheritance of skills, but also the resonance of emotions across time and space.
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