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I always find it interesting that objects like these must have had to have a purpose. Why couldn’t it have been a piece of art simply for decoration?

dragontamer 3y ago
I can only imagine some archeologist looking at the Filipino giant spoon/fork hanging on our kitchen walls and wondering what it would be used for. It's not like anyone actually writes down house decoration theory. You just sorta pick up on it based on visiting a bunch of people's homes in a community.
- PraetorianGourd 3y ago
  But it does have cultural significance. Filipino dishes are served with a fork and a spoon, not with a knife as is common in the west, or chopsticks as in some other Asian cultures. It is a very culturally specific thing, and something that hopefully is written somewhere. If not, maybe this little conversation will do the trick and be referenced ages from now
bombcar 3y ago
If they were art you’d expect them to be more different, and not as localized.
brazzy 3y ago
Because if you do art, you want to make something unique. Artists don't create exact replicas of the same object so often that a hundred of them are found over 1000 years later (which implies that there were probably many thousands of these).
- djur 3y ago
  This would suggest that the "cool S" that showed up in notebooks, on walls, etc. throughout my youth was a religious/ritual symbol. Same with stuffed squirrels and singing bass and "Bless This Mess" crochets and barn stars...
  - brazzy 3y ago
    It merely suggest that those are not art. And going back to the original question, making those dodecahedrons would have required considerable expense, skills, and effort. That's not the kind of thing that can spread as a low-effort fad, and an artist who's going to spend that much time on something would be even less likely to make an exact replica rather than something original.

dragontamer 3y ago

I can only imagine some archeologist looking at the Filipino giant spoon/fork hanging on our kitchen walls and wondering what it would be used for. It's not like anyone actually writes down house decoration theory. You just sorta pick up on it based on visiting a bunch of people's homes in a community.

PraetorianGourd 3y ago
But it does have cultural significance. Filipino dishes are served with a fork and a spoon, not with a knife as is common in the west, or chopsticks as in some other Asian cultures. It is a very culturally specific thing, and something that hopefully is written somewhere. If not, maybe this little conversation will do the trick and be referenced ages from now

bombcar 3y ago

If they were art you’d expect them to be more different, and not as localized.

brazzy 3y ago

Because if you do art, you want to make something unique. Artists don't create exact replicas of the same object so often that a hundred of them are found over 1000 years later (which implies that there were probably many thousands of these).

djur 3y ago
This would suggest that the "cool S" that showed up in notebooks, on walls, etc. throughout my youth was a religious/ritual symbol. Same with stuffed squirrels and singing bass and "Bless This Mess" crochets and barn stars...
- brazzy 3y ago
  It merely suggest that those are not art. And going back to the original question, making those dodecahedrons would have required considerable expense, skills, and effort. That's not the kind of thing that can spread as a low-effort fad, and an artist who's going to spend that much time on something would be even less likely to make an exact replica rather than something original.