Nature’s pottery, out of your gourd

The gourd family consists of a large family of vined plants. They range from the edible ones like pumpkins, squash, and cucumbers to the inedible kind like the hard-shelled gourds. For this article, I will be writing about the hard-shelled gourds. Hard-shelled gourds are the inedible fruit of two types of plants, Lagenaria and Cucurbita. These gourds come in many shapes and sizes. Some of these gourds are beautifully colored, and some have very interesting and even weird shapes that are used for decoration and ornamental purposes. These are also usually small. The harder shelled gourds, the midsize range, can be used for bowls, jugs, drinking ladles, and vessels. These gourds are the favorites of artisans as with imagination and some paint or by carving, one can create wonderful pieces of art.  You can often see these cleverly created gourds at craft shows. The large sized gourds, bottle gourds, are basically used for birdhouses, but some artists also paint them to be used as decorations.

Researchers, teams of anthropologists and biologists theorize (guess) that bottle gourds may have originated in Asia and either traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to here, either by being hand carried, or by floating across a land bridge called the Bering Strait. They suggest that prehistoric people brought them here some 10,000 years ago.  I always wonder why the supposed travel on the supposed Bering Strait is assumed to have gone only in one direction! If there was travel on the Bering Straits, I guess maybe there was a huge ONE-WAY sign there that everyone obediently obeyed.  It’s interesting to note that scientists from Harvard University found that the bottle gourd, used as a container and not as food, is the earliest known domesticated plant grown here on Turtle Island. Radiocarbon dating found that the gourds found here that were used as containers date back to at least 9,000 years. You can read the report about this at:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/102/51/18315  .

It is recorded that Native people used gourds for many things, and as far as Native peoples are concerned, the gourds were and are native to Turtle Island.  Native people, like the Yuman, in the south-western United States used and still use traditional gourd rattles.  The Kumeyaay California Indians use gourd rattles. These rattles are used for their bird dances and for their ceremonies. The gourd rattles have desert willow handles. Palm seeds are put inside the gourds to make the rattle sounds. In the Kumeyaay language the rattle is called Halma. Early Indians also used gourds for insect control. The saucer shaped bowl gourd shown with the hard gourds (photo), the design on it was created by the Huichole Indians of Mexico. These people call themselves the healers. For centuries they were hidden from the modern world by the Sierra Madre Mountains that formed a natural barrier for them. The bowl is cut from a gourd, then lined with colorful beads that are pressed into beeswax. This art is considered sacred. It is done as a ceremony to heal and protect Mother Earth.

Many territories of Native people would also clean the gourds out and cut holes in the gourd’s sides. Then they would hang the gourds on trees or poles around their gardens and living quarters.  The Creek Indians of the Southeast are recorded as making and using many of these gourd nests to attract purple martins. The Native people found that by making the  size of the hole a certain width and by hanging a lot of gourds around their village, the insect population decreased greatly around their villages. The purple martins, too, learned that being around man was beneficial to them. The birds left the holes in trees where they used to nest, and the beginning of a beneficial and happy relation between man and the purple martin began. The constant traffic in the gardens also kept other birds from using the nests.  Since the nests were hanged with string or sinew, the swaying in the wind kept other birds from trying to enter them. Native people also used gourds as utensils, as bowls, as bottles, as bird houses, as instruments, and as ornaments. Gourds are pollinated in the same way as squash plants. They are mostly pollinated by bees, while night blooming gourds are pollinated by moths.

Gourds are the earliest plants to be cultivated by humans. They were used as containers and vessels before clay or stone was used. They are often referred to as “nature’s pottery”.  Gourds have been found that show that they were used for other functions. For instance, early specimens of squash shells found in Peru indicate they were used to record events. It was also found that gourd skins were used surgically to replace missing portions of human skulls about 3000 years ago during the Neolithic period. Very fine gold sheets and gourd skins were inserted in the skull under the skin to cover holes left from head operations. Today, a growing following has emerged in the United States for using the gourd for crafts. These crafts include carving, sculpture, basketry, musical instruments, masks, painting on them, and much more.

You can plant your own gourds and dry them, but it takes a very long time. The molds that can grow when the gourds are dried may also be dangerous to your health.  It is probably best to buy them. Gourds can be ordered online, local farmers and markets sell them, craft stores carry them, and even your local supermarket may have some. Just be sure, if you are buying them to do crafts, to get the hard shell kind as the soft shell are used mainly as ornaments. If you are going to plant your own and dry your own, be sure to read up on the hows. It is very important to follow safety steps that will be included in directions.  Gourds right off the vine sometimes make silly things with very little crafting on your part. The penguin gourd is already halfway to being a penguin statue.  Goose gourds are a type of bottle gourd and they can be made into fantastic geese. Some gourd shapes lend themselves with a little paint to being whales swans, and even elephants. Bottle gourds can be made into ghosts, Christmas tree angels, Thanksgiving Day turkeys, and even Easter eggs.

Dried hard shelled gourds are very much like wood. They can be cut, burned, painted, drilled, carved, stained and dyed. Cutting a gourd is like cutting wood, so the saying, “measure twice and cut once” is great advice to follow. Making purple martin houses out of the large gourds is a great group project. For children, adult supervision is necessary for cutting the proper size hole for the martins to enter and to drill small hanger holes and drainage holes in the bottom. For great instructions on making these bird houses see:

http://www.amishgourds.com/site/1278922/page/466873 Gourds keep the birds safe from predators because they lack perches for other birds to land on, and their swinging motion keeps other birds away. They are best when hanged and able to swing. Gourds also offer better protection from the weather because of their insulation properties. They also offer protection from blowing rain, as the holes are far enough away to prevent the rain from blowing in on the birds.

One of the projects I enjoyed most when I was a youngster was to make finger puppets. The gourds used for the puppet’s heads were the small hard kind we bought ready to craft from a local farmer. Round gourds with long slender tops were the best. The round part was the head, and the long part was the puppet’s nose. Some shapes were really very funny and or weird looking. The funnier and the weirder, the better it was for us kids. Sometimes we glued googley eyes on the heads and pasted yarn hair on them. Other times we used paint or markers to make their hair, ears, and eyes. We would use old gloves as their clothes. This was good because all you had to do was put on the glove, put your pointer finger into the hole drilled in the gourds head, and ‘walla’ you had an instant puppet. We would sometimes sew buttons on the gloves, tie ribbons on them, and attach whatever else we could find to make them look fancy. We even used feathers.  For clothes you could even just wrap a silky kerchief around your hand before you put your finger into the puppet head.  It was really a lot of fun. After we made our puppets, we held little puppet shows for each other.

Hard shelled gourds are wonderful to use if you want to use natural materials. Gourds are versatile and an eco-friendly medium. Gourding is a great way to express your artistic abilities and unwind at the same time. Gourds can be painted, carved, dyed, and you can even put designs on them with a wood burning tool. They can be decorated with nuts, seeds, feather, beads, whatever you may have around the house. Some people even make museum quality pieces. It is even possible to make jewellery. You can buy small gourds, match two of the same size, decorate and turn them into earrings. Bracelets can be cut from rounds. These are light and durable.  If you cut your gourds to make vases, etc., save the scraps.

If you shop around, there may even be some local gourd groups in our area, or you can start one. They are called “patches”. These patches get together and learn from each other. They sometimes will put together gourd art shows to show and sell their pieces.  There could even be a children’s section where kids could make their own creations with supervision. It is truly wonderful that something that grows on Mother Earth can be used for so many things, and they are enjoyable as well as some being necessary and usable things.  Some of you out there are good at beading the peyote stitch. This stitch can be used to bead a decoration around the neck of the gourds, and now you will know why the peyote stitch is also called the “gourd stitch”. Go out of your gourd and enjoy one of “nature’s canvasses”.