Designs inspired by artists who carved on canyon walls thousands of years ago, calling to spirits of the winged, four legged and finned. Let your fingers glide across moose antler or earthen disks to touch the ridged edges, picturing the powerful animal who moved unafraid through mountain, savanna or jungle. Designed by C.L. Ramsdell and created by Dakota Bones Inc.

Cherie Ramsdell is a South Dakota artist who works primarily in antler, bone, rawhide, and raku fired clay. Cherie became interested in pottery as a personal form of expression while working on her Masters in Art Education at Northern State University, Aberdeen, South Dakota. Living on the Plains of the Dakotas has made Cherie, a rancher's daughter, very aware of the power of Mother Nature. Like Mother Nature, raku is spontaneous and unpredictable yet sometimes fragile. Those contradictions drew Cherie to further investigate raku fired clay forms.

The hide, combined with the bone she finds on the prairie, suggests a resurrection, the passing of life, and the nourishment of new life. Bones possess a unique, almost musical quality, a kind of instinctive rhythm which intrigues her. "I connect them with the base of the human experience, the dual heartbeat of a mother and a child-almost like a primitive drum beat which ties together and puts the universe in order," Cherie says.

Cherie uses the rawhide as a symbol of all living things. Like a creature in the early stages of life, freshly tanned rawhide is very fluid, silky, without a definite form. Later, with the passing of time, the flexibility and the moisture dissipate, causing the rawhide to become hard and unrelenting. Those contradictory qualities of flexibility and firm resistance, Cherie knows, can be found in people from all walks of life.

The material and forms Cherie uses have both a freshness and an ancient nature. Like her, they are not frozen in time. She values them as anchors to the past and welcomes their continuity and timeless quality.

Buffalo