Product Description

Sumatran Medicine Container 1

Material: Bamboo, wood
Style: Batak people, Lake Toba, North Sumatra, Indonesia
Size: Height 16 cm, Diameter 10 cm (top), 13.5 cm (bottom)
Order Number: MHSCON4

Bamboo medicine container (perminaken), etched with geometric motifs and creatures,  with carved wooden stoppers in the form of a singa (lion).

Magician priests keep their magical brews (pupuk) in medicine containers. They often use hollow horns of goats or water buffalos and the open end is stopped with a wooden plug, the top being usually carved in the shape of a squatting human figure. Some of the rarer ones have a powerful singa head and perhaps part of the lion’s upper body, sometimes with people on its back.

The medicine containers were carried by a cord attached to the man’s belt or over his shoulder.