We were first notified of this surprise appearance from a comment in our online collection by Marlene F. Emmett, who spotted a statue that sure looks like our “Bird Lady” in the first episode of the second season of the HBO series True Blood. When I heard about it from Shelley via e-mail, I began to search the web and found an art history shout-out to us at this blog.
Great eye, ladies, and thanks for letting us know about it! Shelley meanwhile got some screenshots to me so I could study them:
Sam Trammell with “Bird Lady” in the second season premiere of the HBO series True Blood.
Of course, this is not our actual “Bird Lady,” but the prop in the pictures is clearly based on our most complete examples, like the one on our website. I know this because we included two fragmentary “Bird Lady figurines” in our recently closed exhibition, The Fertile Goddess and I did a lot of research on Predynastic female figurines from Egypt in order to write the labels.
Close-up of “Bird Lady” from True Blood.
Like the figure used in True Blood, the Brooklyn Museum figurines have white paint on their lower halves, representing a skirt, and their legs are not indicated. They were all excavated from graves at one site in Egypt in the early twentieth century. Other Predynastic figurines with raised arms and beak-like faces exist but they don’t have the skirt and their legs are indicated. For an example of this type see this figure at the British Museum.
I would love to know how True Blood got the idea for this prop! Did someone from the show come to Brooklyn and see ours? Did they see it online or in a book? It is certainly an iconic and much reproduced image but not necessarily one I’d expect to turn up in a television show.
I am also very curious about where they found the replica that is used in the show. I did find a few websites that sell replicas based on our “Bird Lady” (here, here and here) and even a photo of one of these replicas on Flickr. However, these have very different bases from the one on True Blood. Maybe they had a different base made or even commissioned an artist to make a replica. I’d be grateful to hear from anyone who might know the answers to these questions.
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Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum
It is so obviously intended to hang on a horizontal line that it must be a tool of some kind. I suggested a plumb bob of some sort earlier. It might simply be decorative or a toy, but look at how the ‘chin’ and the arms are arranged and imagine a cord threaded through them.
Hi, Madeleine,
Thank you to you (and Shelley) for connecting with my blog. I think it is very cool that True Blood had the Bird Lady in in it. That’s one of my favorite pieces in the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, and one of my favorite prehistoric goddess figures. It’s very beautiful and enigmatic.
I don’t know where they got the replica, or if they made it (I’m thinking the latter), but one of my friends, who’s a fan of the show, said she thinks Maryann will turn into a bird later in the season. If she does, then I will have to give huge props to True Blood for researching what the Bird Lady was about.
Thanks again~Tasha B. from Heidenkind’s Hideaway
if you do get more information about that specific replica,
I’d love to know where it came from as well.
thanks.
My friend Cindy Jackson sculpted the bird lady for the show True Blood. She used the material available online to do it.
You can find her work on http://www.cjacksonscupture.com
oops. http://www.cjacksonsculpture.com
Hey everyone, check it out! We got answers to our questions via @TrueBloodHBO!