PANGOLIN BAUBLE

For this project I designed and made a porcelain pangolin, gilded and suspended on a fraying golden thread to represent the plight of pangolins on the brink of extinction.They are the most trafficked mammal in the world. The meat and scales of many species of this beautiful little anteater are prized by affluent Chinese society who wrongly attribute it with health giving properties in Chinese medicine  for everything from cancer cures to helping impotence and  hangovers. Needless to say the keratin scales have no medicinal value. The pangolin is almost extinct in China and Vietnam so the black market has turned to African pangolins for a fresh supply chain. Illegally collected from the wild in huge numbers they are transported in terrible conditions and force fed rice which they cannot digest to increase their weight before sale . The fetishisation of rarity by capitalist society has put a huge price on pangolins so poaching continues. Pangolin is the most expensive dish on the menu in restaurants in China so businessmen order it as a status symbol to display their wealth and now that it's capture and trade is illegal they buy it to show that they are not only rich but think they are above the law.