protective charms

Protective ransom (glud tshabs) made of paper with a watercolour paint design and mounted on a wooden stick. The top section of the banner shaped paper is decorated with a pink lotus with green leaves. Below this section and a section at the bottom consists of yellow, red and blue bands. The main sections have geometric patterns. The top pattern consists of interlocking blue and red triangles with yellow and green sections between with black symbols. The bottom pattern is four triangles, two red and two green, with black symbols. The two patterned sections are separated by a blue and a red band.

This ransom is surmounted with a lotus, suggesting that it could represent a woman (see nn3658.3). Conceivably the repeated symbol of a cross with two horizontals could be a very abstract representation of a spinning wheel, the other female symbol used in ransoms, however, this is uncertain..

object
MUSEUM NUMBER
nn3658.2
PLACE
COLLECTION
MEASUREMENTS
overall: 304 mm x 62 mm x 2 mm
MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE
paper; wood; watercolour
CATEGORY
Anthropology: Ethnography
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Collection Information

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