Ceremonial drinking vessel or Kasa, birchwood, carved and painted, Norway, late 19th century.

Ceremonial drinking vessel or kasa, of birchwood, the circular bowl raised on a shallow plinth and rising at each side to form handles in the form of the head and curled tail of a dragon. The plinth is painted blue, the outside of the bowl and the handles is painted green and the inside yellow, with all surfaces decorated with scrolls in beige, outlined in greyish blue. The teeth of the dragon are gilded.

Given by Mrs Alec Tweedie FRGS

The bowl was given to the Museum by Mrs Alec Tweedie, with four other Norwegian objects (W.100 to W.104-1926) from her ethnographic collection, which she described as 'odds & ends from a traveller' (Acquisition File). Ethel Brilliana Tweedie (1862-1940) was a prolific English author, travel writer. biographer, historian, editor, journalist and illustrator. In her youth she visited Iceland and published her journal A Girl's Ride in Iceland in 1889; in 1894 she published A Winter Jaunt to Norway and in 1898 Through Finland in Carts. Her husband died in 1896, from the stress of financial failure, and she was left destitute, so took to writing to support herself and her two young sons, both of whom died later on active military service. She was an early and enthusiastic advocate of women's rights and women's suffrage. A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, her book An Adventurous Journey, Russia-Siberia-China was published in 1929 (London, Thornton Butterworth 1929). Other items from her collection were passed on to Warrington Museum and Art Gallery, the Horniman Museum and he British Museum. She gave, and also bequeathed on her death in 1940, a wide variety of other objects to the V&A.

The pattern of this ceremonial drinking bowl--brightly painted and carved with horse or dragon head handles--has been traditional in Norway since Medieval times. The original use of a bowl like this may have been for a prehistoric ceremony that involved the sacrifice of horses, but the bowls continued to be made for centuries. The bowl, or kasa, is carved from a single block of birch, as all such pieces were. The revival of interest in Norwegian folk art in the late 19th century made such bowls highly collectible, and new ones, such as this one, were also made.

W.104-1926