Sacred Items

This finely detailed, hand-crafted stone carving represents a miniature Andean farm complete with animals, patio, buildings and a side altar with circles. This piece is impressive for the detail and close carving of the figures. Creamy marble-like stone talismans such as this were once used among the Quechua and Aymara people for ensuring the reproductive fertility of domestic animals. Called illas or canopas in Quechua and mullas in Aymara, these are small figurative charms used to ensure fertility, love, and other of life's benefits. Those which are made for the purpose of increasing the fecundity and health of flocks of herd animals are also sometimes called chacras, that word meaning field or pasture and the charms being activated by burial in a field or pasture. Learn More