So, after a slight detour last time, today I got back on track with some research and decision-making. I decided, first of all, to make my next project a Peruvian whistling vessel.
These are pretty much exactly what they sound like (hee hee) - they are awesome. They were made by many different ancient civilizations in South America, and vary according to culture (see article listed below). Like stirrup vessels (the project I originally considered making) the vessels often have an arched, hollow handle at the top, which can be blown into; the air then moves through the main chamber of the vessel and out the spout, going across the opening of a whistle implanted in the vessel as it does so. -That's the idea, in any case! The article below outlines some tests performed on the vessels to relate tone produced to area of origin. Scans have also been done of these vessels to peer into how they work without actually breaking them apart - unfortunately, those pictures seem to exist only in books about the history of pottery, rather than online, or I would have included one.
To make this work, I realized quickly, I would need to be able to make working whistles. So, for two hours, I experimented. I tried out different ways to make the hollow sphere of the whistle - molding it over my thumb, for example, or the currently accepted method of making two halves and smooshing them together - and I tried out five different sizes of whistle, from walnut-size to just larger than a golf ball. I even picked a mid-range size and made a few extra, some with thick walls, some with thin, to see if that affected the sound produced. This was by no means exact science; but, I figured, the point of these projects is more the curiosity and the discovery than the exactness, per se. Results of this experiment will come in another post; when the whistles have dried out a bit, I plan to chop some of them in half (for curiosity's sake), as well as compare the sounds each size/variety makes once they are more solid. Stay tuned. :~)
Whistling vessels - research into cultural variance
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