Need help identifying weird barnicle figurine!

Taber barnical by Obvious posted Aug 31, 2020 at 8:43 AM

Taber barnical by Obvious posted Aug 31, 2020 at 8:43 AM

Taber barnical by Obvious posted Aug 31, 2020 at 8:43 AM

 

It wants to be a pig from the front and a turtle from the back. Armadillo???

 

Not sure what you're asking. Do you mean "barnacle"? If so, there is no relationship at all to this figurine. A barnacle is a crustacean, with a shell-like body, that lives in salt water, attached to a hard surface. It doesn't have ears, or a head.

(A "barnical" is someone "raised in a barn," an Urban Dictionary term. Again, not related at all to this pottery.)

The pottery is either a fantasy figure, or something created by someone who didn't know what the animal it's intended to be, looks like. It has features of an aardvark, an anteater, and (maybe) an armadillo, but it is none of those.

Both aardvarks and armadillos have big ears, but armadillos are covered with hard plates, and aardvarks don't have long hair. Anteaters and aardvarks both have long tubular snouts, but anteaters have longer hair. This has an aardvark's mouth, not an anteater's. All three have long tails.

The pottery decorating technique, though, is referred to as "spaghetti," and was popular especially in the 1950s. The technique of producing the "spaghetti" by pushing clay through a tea strainer or fine screen is still practiced today by some crafters. I assume that's who "Taber" is.