Souvenirs

This time around, a pictures only (well more or less) blog. Whenever I travel I bring souvenirs home. Mostly they are recently made imitations of traditional crafts. They are almost always things I can hang on the wall, occasionally things to stand on the shelf and very occasional items that you can't really stand anywhere. Anyway here are a few of them.

Let's start off with a native American sand painting. I could have bought a dream catcher but this appealed to me rather more.

This evil looking set of knives was purchased in Malawi. It's actually a lot more flimsy than it looks.


Paintings on camel bone. Or so the man in the shop in Iran told me.



A bit of a cheat. This piece of decorative upholstery wasn't bought by me. It was bought for me as a present from a friend who lives in Singapore.



One of a number of African masks, or at least African looking masks. This one was actually purchased in Malaysia.


But this one was purchased in Africa - Malawi to be precise.


This dragon was smashed to pieces in the hold of the aeroplane on the way back from Thailand. I spent a long time restoring it and it now looks a lot better than it ever did when I bought it.


The table was from a roadside stall in Zambia, the metal pot from Tunisia. Note the cunning construction of the table legs. They have been carved from a single piece of wood and can be folded back together to see how it was done.


A present from Tunisia.



A painting on a feather from Costa Rica. I don't know if this is traditional or not but I saw it in a shop and thought it was great.



This painting comes from china. I watched the artist creating them so I know just how modern it is. I love it for the vibrant colours.



A rather marvellous painting that I paid a rather exhorbitant price for in Finland.



A couple of trinket baskets from Madagascar.


Carvings from Peru. They are actually carved from soft stone and, as the smell will attest, subsequently blackened with boot polish.


My favourite ever souvenir - an Iranian chess set. The picture doesn't really give you a good enough idea of how intricate the decoration really is.


A couple of "trick pots" from Peru again. Turned upside down you can fill them with water. Turned the right way up again no water falls out, but you can then pour the water from the spout.



And finally a picture of pressed flowers on paper bought, if memory serves, in Malawi.

That's it for now. I hope you enjoyed this brief respite from my writing to glance at a few souvenirs. Next time, back to the writing.