The Piccirilli Bros

Who are they?

Why, they are the 6 Italian-American sculptor-carvers (Getulio, Furio, Attilio, Ferrucio, Masaniello, and Orazio!) who were responsible for some of America's greatest monuments! 

The one that EVERYONE and their mothers know about? The marble giant that is Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C..

The same one that comes to life in "Night at the Museum II: The Smithsonian"!! =)

They hand-carved that masterpiece! 

Man.. to have 6 brothers who are all talented in the skill of sculpture/marble-carving!

My sister and I share the same genes, yet I can't say we share any skills... 

[I guess we both played golf in high school.. but I barely managed to stay in the junior varsity team, while my sister played varsity... I promise I'm not bitter or anything..]

Being the carvers, and not the artists/one who designed the pieces, they did not put their names on the works. Thus they weren't as recognized.

I'm trying to do some additional research on the Piccirilli brothers and artist John Gregory, and decided to post on the blog with the interesting things that I was finding. 

I like Furio the best.

And maybe Orazio next.

Sorry, Getulio, Attilio, Ferrucio, and Masaniello. You guys are still really cool too.

Head of a camel+body of a snake=?

DRAGON!

Today, textile conservator Yadin Larochette visited us at the Scripps Gallery. =)

She examined a couple pieces of our textile collection, many which had DRAGONS on them. 

Don't we all love dragons!

Patricia taught us that the dragon is a mixture of different animals, and so I decided to check just how many different animals there were. And what better place than...

WIKIPEDIA!

So apparently, the Chinese long dragon has nine anatomical resemblances:

1. Horns of a stag/deer.

2. Head of a camel. (Yeah, we were pretty surprised with that one too. But I can kinda see it.)

3. Eyes of a demon/rabbit. haha.

4. Neck of a snake.

5. Belly of a clam/frog.

6. Scales of a carp.

7. Claws of an eagle/hawk.

8. Soles of a tiger/palms of a tiger.

9. Ears of a cow.

[Also mentioned: a tortoise's viscera??]

[Also, in Singaporean folktales, the dragon has attributes of the other 11 creatures in the zodiac. I thought that was pretty cool..]

The needlework on the textiles were amazing. I can't imagine the amount of labor that went into these textiles. No wonder only the wealthy could afford these. 

It's so perfect that it's crazy!

Mary mentioned the possibility of a couple museums getting together to exhibit the best of their Asian textile collections. 

That would be an awesome exhibition!!

I really hope that can happen.

But getting textiles in a good enough condition to be exhibited is probably ridiculously expensive.

I took a peak at some of the estimated costs for conservation work of the textiles and ... DANG! 

But hopefully it will happen one day =)