Phaunos, 2023

Genuine Blesbok skull. Phaunos (Greek god of the forest) shows off his lush spring forest colors, highlighted by a vintage butterfly broach, surrounded by turquoise and ivory Czech glass beads. Mounted on driftwood collected by my father from Buffalo Bison near Cody, Wyoming in the mid-1970s. The blesbok or blesbuck is a subspecies of the bontebok antelope endemic to South Africa, Eswatini and Namibia. It has a distinctive white face and forehead which inspired the name, because bles is the Afrikaans word for a blaze such as one might see on the forehead of a horse.