This hardwood carving is one of a pair that came from the façade of an aristocratic ancestor house (

Captain John Pratt was a Hartford native, the son of Zachariah and Abigail (Cook) Pratt. During the American Revolutionary War, he served as assistant commissary general under James Clinton, and continued to pursue a military career after the end of the war.

Born and trained in the British Colonies, the painter Ralph Earl fled to England in 1778 because he supported the King of England during the Revolutionary War. After his return to the newly independent United States in 1785, he took advantage of the market for portraits of war heroes. During the 1790s Ralph Earl travel

The Toraja carve tau-tau, smaller than life-size funerary figures, to commemorate high-ranking deceased. Only members of the highest-ranking aristocracy are permitted to have permanent tau-tau.

Mawa’ are magic cloths painted by a ritual specialist. They are painted prayers to help ensure continued abundance, wealth, and reproductive success. 

For centuries the Toraja people have buried their elite dead in tombs cut into the face of steep limestone cliffs – “the house from which no smoke rises.” The entrances are sealed with almost square wooden doors carved with the image of the head of a water buffalo or, less frequently, a human guardian figure.