Instrumentos de cerámica

Golden-Eyed Frog

A fortune whistle bottle. In both Indigenous American and Asian traditions, amphibians symbolize abundance, fertility, and prosperity. This frog conceals gold within—its exterior appears to be that of an ordinary green and brown frog, but its interior is golden, revealed only through its eyes. The bottle contains two whistles that produce acoustic beating when blown. The instrument offers multiple playing modes, each with a distinct sonic character: 1. Direct blow — activates both whistles; the pitch can be adjusted by covering the individual openings. Can be played with or without water. 2. Water rocking—with the precise amount of water inside, tilting the frog forward and back causes it to croak on its own, without blowing. 3. Direct blow with water, tilted backward — when blown firmly, it produces a broken, cracked sound like a frog’s cry; when blown gently, it creates layered croaking that evokes a rainy evening teeming with amphibians. 4. Indirect blowing into the bottle neck — the neck acts as a resonance chamber; tilting the bottle backward fills it with water, reducing the air space and shifting the pitch as if driven by a piston. Each piece is carefully packed to protect the fragile ceramic and shipped in a handcrafted wooden box at no additional cost.

Year

2026

Type

Single-chamber whistle bottle

Materials

Saggar clay; bevel-and-window duct flutes, Mexican jaguar whistle

Firing

1250 °C

Dimensions

20.5 × 19.5 × 18 cm

Location

Austria