On the road to Mandalay

Country: Spain

Manufactory: Lladro

Date of establishment: 1982

Sculptor: Vicente Martínez

Size (cm): 53*34 

Limited Series

Porcelain Story

Every time I look at this amazing porcelain composition, which has “lived” in my editorial office for many years, I remember two events connected with it. First, about how, while traveling around the island of Haiti, we found this rare work in one of the godforsaken shops of Santo Domingo. But then they could not buy it, because the sellers simply ... did not know its value. And secondly, about how, after a trip with children to Thailand and many hours of traveling through the rainforest on two huge elephants, I firmly decided to find this composition at all costs, literally photographically conveying our comfortable conditions of “saddling” an elephant. And a few years later I found it at one of the online auctions.

Now I look at the heroes of this work - and as if I see us ourselves, decorously sitting on the same pillows and singing loudly with little Andryusha to the whole forest, the Ukrainian folk song “Oh, Galya, Galya is young ...” so loudly that our mother Galya, who had gone far ahead with little Dimochka, could hear our voices.

Later, when after a tiring adventure we were resting on an elephant farm and the children squealed with delight, stroking the prickly (!) back of a little elephant, Galya asked why we sang with some strange accent. I had to explain to her that the driver of our elephant - a little thin man without age - listened to our singing for a long time, and then he began to pull himself up, singing incredibly: "Oh, Galya ..."

Today, many countries celebrate World Elephant Day. It would seem, do animals recognized as the largest on the surface of the Earth need protection? The average weight of their body reaches 5 tons, and the length of the body is 6-7 meters. They say that in 1956 an elephant weighing 11 tons was killed in Angola!.. It turns out that elephants have long been in need of both help and protection. And first of all, from the people themselves, who exterminate entire herds of elephants for commercial purposes.

And if African elephants are listed in the Red Book with the wording "in a state close to threatened", then Indian elephants have long been there as representatives of a rapidly disappearing species. Although they could live and live, multiplying and bringing joy and benefit to people. By the way, elephants live quite a long time - from 50 to 70 years. Although there are also long-livers among them. So, a war elephant named Lin Wang, who served in the Chinese army, died at the age of 86 years.

Elephants are amazing animals in many ways. And not only because their brain weighs 5 kilograms, and the heart is even more - as much as 20-30 kilograms. Elephants have an incredibly good memory and a well-developed intellect. Even Aristotle wrote that "an elephant is an animal that surpasses all others in wit and intelligence." Scientists have proven the ability of elephants to learn human language. An elephant named Koshik who lived in Thailand (how do you like this amazing connection with the Ukrainian language?!) managed to learn a dozen words, which he always used correctly in practice!

Elephants are sometimes compared with people in their attitude towards the dead. When one of the members of the elephant family leaves for the other world, the relatives raise him with their trunks, trumpet loudly and sadly, and then roll him over to a previously prepared depression in the ground, cover him with branches and throw him with earth. After that, the elephants spend several days, worrying, near this burial. Silently saying goodbye to a loved one ...

While elephants are smart and perceptive, they can sometimes be hopelessly naive. It is known that if, from the very childhood, a baby elephant is tied with a rope by the leg to a tree so that he cannot escape anywhere, then an adult elephant, tied with a thin ribbon to a flimsy tree, will quietly be on a leash, not daring to break the ban and thinking that he still won't be able to break out of captivity...