Arts and Crafts of Brazil – Amazon

The native arts of Brazil include striking bark and feather masks, shaped and painted to resemble animals; they also decorated the dead with feathers, which presumably had some ritualistic function.

The most dramatic art, though, involves feathers and they continue to wear them today for ceremonies and as status symbols.

Since they lacked precious metals, some feather designs serve as jewellery, sometimes as ear or nose ornaments, or combined with jaguar teeth to create necklaces.

The colourful plumage of the birds found across the Amazon is the primary resource for amazing necklaces made with animal claws and shells, earrings, capes and headdresses called, cocares.

Indian feather art has a ritualistic dimension. From the capture of the birds, the cutting of the feathers, to their transformation into a specific artefact, the entire process is done by the men for their rituals.

Feather art is a symbolic form of communication. Each Indian ethnic group uses body adornment that is unique and different from other groups.

Their feather art conveys meaning during ceremonies. It can signify a social position, an initiation stage, an affiliation and more. It is mostly men who use feather objects.

The Indians of the Amazon also created pottery, especially the Marajó in the state of Tocantins.

Beautiful basketry and woven cloth dyed with extracts of plants was used for mats sieves hammocks and fish nets.

Except for rock art, Painting was mostly done on human body in many colours and had the same geometric designs as on mats and baskets.

Indeed, body painting, which involves using mineral and vegetable pigments to create a dazzling variety of abstract forms on faces, torsos and legs, is perhaps the most common form of artistic expression.