Copper Elephant - Age and Origin?

Hi, I am not sure if this is right in the tribal section, but does anybody know where this little elephant ( 7 x 6 cm) comes from and how old he is? He is made of bronze or copper.

Thank you very much,

Mat

 

It looks like it's from Weight Watchers

 

The figure looks South American to me.
I was trying to find if elephants were ever brought over for working the rainforests. Instead found mention on several sites that elephants are used in artwork. Here is an excerpt from one site:

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/american-elephant-myths.html

About 3/4s of the page down:
In Mexico there are many indications that elephants were known to the ancient inhabitants. Some of the bas-reliefs of Palenque figured by Waldeck are very strikingly like elephants, and the resemblance can hardly be the result of accident or coincidence. Close to an ancient causeway near Tezcuco, in what may have been the ditch of the road, an entire mastodon skeleton was found, which "bore every appearance of having been coeval with the period when the road was used." Humboldt reproduces a figure from a Mexican manuscript representing a human sacrifice, and says of it: "The disguise of the sacrificing priest presents a remarkable and apparently not accidental resemblance to the Hindoo Ganesa [the elephant-headed god]. . . . Had the peoples of Aztlan derived from Asia some vague notions of the elephant, or, as seems to me much less probable, did their traditions reach back to the time when America was still inhabited by these gigantic animals, whose petrified skeletons are found buried in the marly ground on the very ridge of the Mexican Cordilleras?"

Taken altogether, the evidence from tradition and art is strongly in favor of the view that the ancestors of existing American races knew these monstrous animals familiarly. Undoubtedly there is much of fable and absurdity in their legends, but there is something in these tales that is very like truth.


I think your item is a modern piece of sculpture.

 

Looks like an Asante (Africa) gold weight to me.

 

Ashanti

 

It looks Thai to me. Age...dunno, but they cut the tusks off working elephants that way. It keeps the handlers from getting gored, and keeps the poachers off the elephants. The thing their riding in looks like a howdah.

 

I would have to second the Thai theory.

Straw hats are fairly common there. I am not familiar with sawing tusks for working bulls, but I am fairly familiar with elephants as a biologist and armchair elephant lover. In that, I suppose I find bliss in ignorance not knowing they are cutting them like this. We had one here at a zoo, in Alaska. I helped with some of the logistics of getting her out of here. This is no place for an elephant, only mammoths.. Hahaha. I actually found some fossilized mammoth tusk this year.

The scientist and lover in me hopes that the tusks were left off of this statue or broken off. The kind of agony one of these loving creatures would endure having them sawed is hard to imagine. Think getting one of your teeth cut off short and left that way… It isn't quite the same but for all we humans know it could be worse. You could end up with a severely traumatized and agonized beast that would be hard to break. I don't even like to think about the breaking, but that may be more brutal than tusk removal. i keep that out of mind.

Anyhow, the padding under the middle rider appears Asian or Indian style. My eyes are bad, but I see this as a piece from Thailand or Malaysia. The metal working seems to fit that region too.

Dating. I don't know. Could be modern or could be very old in my opinion. Elephants have been part of their culture for a long time. Safe to assume that this was post some western interaction due to the hat style.

I could be way off, but it is neat piece. Could you confirm for me that the tusks were intentionally that short in the sculpture and not broken somehow? Poor thing.

I still don't understand why people value ivory from these guys, walruses, and others. It is one thing to salvage the parts of a dead animal for all they can be used for, but just obtaining tusks as a trophy piece is beyond superficial and absolutely unrepresentative of stewarding the Earth. Some people still hunt walruses here, take their head and oosik, then leave the rest. I'm a hunter myself, but I will not take a creature I cannot use.

Sorry about the tangent, it is just so sad to experience and witness the pride and greed of humans take them to very apathetic and desperate lengths.

I say do not clean you statue at all and if you really want a date let a university dig a little in the nooks and crannies.

 

I just doesn't seem anywhere near as refined as the Thai or Malaysian pieces that I have seen. To me at least, it bears a much stringer resemblance to African bronzes. Here is one from my collection (pardon the lousy photo) .

 

Some can be more refined like my Benin Chief..........

 

Thank you all for all these hints! Yes, the elephant looks as if he has not eaten too much! Somehow I do not think this is South American, or at least, in my eyes, it is much more likely that it comes from an area where actually existed elephants... The Ashanti goldweights have a certain similarity, but when I looked for comparable pieces I see some significant differences in the modeling of the bodies of the figures and especially of the faces. Is that within the range of possibilities for these gold weights? The Thai theory sounds interesting to me, but I never found something comparable in style from that area... However, Vern, the tusks are not broken off from the sculpture, but intentionally modeled this way. There is no visible damage to the piece at all. Do you rule out India as the place of origin? Elephants are very common there too and I have seen some "temple toys" from there that show certain similarities in style. However, they have wheels attached to the base. But I think there exits some "folk" or tribal art from India that is very stylized? Could that be a possibility?
Thank you all again and I am curious to see further comments!
Mat