Karen Tribe Bronze Rain Drum

This is an excellent specimen of a Karen tribe bronze rain drum.  The Karen are a Sino-Tibetan tribal group that inhabit the mountain forests of northern Thailand, Burma, and Laos.  Their religious observances are oriented toward the cycles of life: procreation, climate, sun and moon,  and propitiating spirits.  The drums are used to call the rains at the end of the dry season.  The drums feature frogs because frogs emerge (to mate) as the dry earth turns to mud.   Other symbols, like rice grains and ducks, also reference water.   The drums are suspended from ropes, through the molded bronze loops, and hit with a cloth-padded mallet.  The sound can be heard from one mountain top to another.   The drums themselves were cast from bronze in the lost-wax method, which means only one drum can be made from each mold. The mold must be broken to extract the bronze drum inside. The process is laborious but results in the most detailed casting possible, and the last drums are believed to have been cast in the 19th century.  It also...