Majapahit Terracotta
terracotta art from Majapahit-era Java
Majapahit Terracotta is the terracotta art and craft dated from Majapahit era circa 13th to 15th century. Significant terracotta earthenware artifacts from this period were discovered in Trowulan, East Java.
Over the years many terracotta sculptures and artifacts have been discovered as a result of agricultural activities, building roads etc. Some of these finds were brought together in the Trowulan Museum before World War II, but in the subsequent years much of this collection has been lost. After the war, many of the pieces has been unearthed as the result of digging for gold. After the crops have been harvested the farmers lease their land to diggers who dig pits panning the alluvial soil for gold. The terracottas are an incidental find, often bearing the mark of the digging implement.
Today, the Trowulan Museum and the National Museum of Indonesia host large collections of Majapahit terracotta art.
Method
The word terracotta derives from the Latin word meaning burnt earth. Nowadays the word refers to all unglazed red earthenware objects.
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This entry incorporates text from “Majapahit Terracotta” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.