May 31st is World Parrot Day!
To celebrate, here are two cockatoos seen at the recent Majolica Mania exhibition at the Walters Art Museum:
The shape and coloring of the first piece most closeresembleles the real-life male Gang-gang Cockatoo (Callocephalon fimbriatum), native to SE Australia:
[Wikimedia Commons cc by-sa 4.0]
As for the second piece, while the morphology with its psittaciform shape and prominent crest is certainly also based on real-life Cockatoos (family Cacatuidae), the coloration is just fantasy. Although green is indeed one of the most commonly seen colors in Parrots (order Psittaciformes) in general, none of the 21 extant species of cockatoos wear it! Rather, the cockatoos all have either white, grey, or black bodies, with highlights of pink/red/orange/yellow:
(Bonus fun fact: unlike most other birds, who get those bright pink/orange/yellow colors from carotenoids in their diet, parrots synthesize their own unique pigments called psittacofulvins.)
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As seen with these other two pairs of majolica cockatoos manufactured by Minton in the early 20th century, it seems like while the base forms were generally naturalistic, it could go either way when it came time to glaze them whether they would be made to look more naturalistic or more fantastical!
[1st Dibs]
[1st Dibs]
