More than meets the eye at Butler’s Maridon Museum
The Foo Dogs in the Maridon Museum are confusing little creatures without context.
First of all, the two rose quartz carvings watching over the front gallery of the Asian art and culture museum in Butler are actually meant to be depictions of lions. They earned their title as “dogs” because the Chinese word for lion sounds like “shizi,” which is similar to the pronunciation of the Japanese word for dog.
Additionally, the museum has two of them because it’s bad luck to just have one — they need to be in pairs of males and females, to represent protection and nurturing, both placed on pedestals to watch over a home.
Cyndy Sweeney, a docent at the Maridon Museum, explains all this information when she gives tours of the museum. She said the two statues are her favorite pieces in the building. Not only does she appreciate their visual beauty and what the statues symbolize, but Sweeney also can’t help but think about the work that went into making them.
“I love dogs — even though they’re lions — and I do love pink,” Sweeney said. “What I want you to think about is somebody was brought a block of rose quartz … Do you know how much time, energy, creativity, it took to carve these out?”
Sweeney also pointed out the Foo Dogs are placed on either edge of an entryway facing toward the inside of the front gallery, which demonstrates their purpose of protecting the space from bad spirits.
The Foos can be differentiated by what they hold in their paws. The male cradles a ball in its paws, while the female cradles a cub.
“They’re very traditional and they always have to be on a pedestal because they have to be able to look, see what’s happening so they can guard you,” Sweeney said. “They’re taking the evil spirits out of the air and protecting you.”
The Maridon’s permanent collection includes more than 800 art objects, including jade and ivory sculptures, tapestries, landscape paintings, scrolls and artifacts, according to the museum’s website.
The museum opened on May 8, 2004, to display the art collected by lifelong Butler resident Mary Hulton Phillips, an avid collector of Asian art. Roxann Booser, director of the museum, said the museum still receives messages asking to display new submissions, which are evaluated by a committee before being displayed.
“Collections is responsible for the care and display of items,” Booser said. “If a photo meets the need, we would invite them in to look at what they have.”
Booser said some docents at the museum have been there since it opened. Some, like Sweeney and Carole Fruehstorfer, another longtime museum docent, even knew and were acquainted with Phillips before she died.
Fruehstorfer said Phillips had great taste in art, which is why she had such a hard time choosing her absolute favorite piece in the museum. After considering a tortoise shell horse sculpture, she landed on the “Kiriwood Plaque with Takamakie Gold Lacquer,” a 19th-century Japanese piece depicting birds fluttering around a persimmon tree.
The piece was immediately one of Fruehstorfer’s favorites. Everything about it just appealed to her. The subject matter of birds in nature and the canvas it is painted on contribute to the image giving Fruehstorfer a relaxing feeling just from looking at it.
“I like the way the Japanese, they sort of depict things in everyday life,” Fruehstorfer said. “You can see that there are petals falling from the trees, and the two little chicks are fighting over a moth. It’s just more homey.”
Takamakie is a lacquer process, “really a fine art in Eastern Asia, Japan, China, Korea,” which Fruehstorfer learned more about after looking into the piece.
According to Fruehstorfer, the process of crafting with lacquer is “painstakingly slow.” But her research after latching on to the piece made her appreciate the art even more.
“It’s the sap from a tree and they give it the moisture that it needs so it becomes lacquer,” Fruehstorfer said, “and then they sprinkle it with gold powder, and they can use silver also so it blossoms up into a 3D effect, then they put lacquer over it again and polish it, and you end up with this beautiful effect.
“When you find out what it actually takes to produce, you have a different perspective altogether.”
The piece is located in the side gallery of the museum and has a short description plaque saying the panel was created in Japan for export to the West.
Booser said she and the committees that manage the museum create the descriptions for each piece.
She and Fruehstorfer said crafting a good description is an art in itself — it shouldn’t have too much information, but it needs to convey what is necessary — but the museum’s descriptors have been well-received by visitors.
“We’ve gotten compliments on our plaques,” Booser said.
In addition to descriptors providing the title and medium of pieces around the museum, some provide historical context for the art. Some also include the symbolic meaning behind a piece.
The descriptor for the Foo Dogs says the pieces were crafted in the 1900s in China and that they symbolize guardians of faith in Buddhism.
Sweeney provided even more information, saying Foo Dogs would have originated during the Han Dynasty, which was the period between 202 B.C. and 9 A.D., which was a particularly prosperous time for China.
“They invented paper, the first seismographs and they united China,” Sweeney said of the Han Dynasty period. “That was the golden age for China.”
Fruehstorfer said visiting the museum also helps give people a glimpse at different Asian cultures and the different styles of different nations.
“I kind of noticed that the Japanese pieces were a lot more formal. I thought it would be the Chinese,” she said.
In addition to the museum’s open hours, free docent tours are available. Reservations are required for group tours and are suggested for docent tours and the video presentation. The museum can be reached by phone at 724-282-0123.
