WHO IS BEHIND PHERSU DANCING?
Phersu Dancing is the creative outlet for Cat. When she's not making jewellery, thinking about making jewellery, or otherwise creatively involved, she's earning money at her day job to be able to... buy more jewellery ingredients.
HOW CAN I CONTACT PHERSU DANCING?
Phersu Dancing is now part of Copper Catkin - find us on Facebook!
WHY PHERSU - AND IS HE DANCING???
The Phersu figure only ever appears twice with the inscription 'phersu', both times in the Tomb of the Augurs at Tarquinia, c.530-520 BCE. He is a mysterious figure from an Etruscan tomb painting, and although many scholars have tried to identify him and his role in the Etruscan funeral rites or even their religion as a whole, none have managed to do so conclusively. I count myself in this number - a framed print of this figure has been hanging on the wall, in each of our successive houses, all my life, although I never really knew anything about him. As my parents and later, our whole family, had travelled extensively, I simply thought he was another wall painting, although I did think he was Persian, not Etruscan. One day I was attending a University lecture for a second-year paper on Roman and Etruscan art, and who should I see but Phersu - and what's more, my lecturer described him as something of an enigma. I was hooked. I went on to do my essay for the paper on the Phersu figure, and he also became the topic of my Honours Research essay, so I have given over two years to concentrated research on him, finding a possible clue in the last weeks of my study when I didn't have time to pursue it...Five years later, I still haven't solved the riddle of the Phersu figure. Scholars haven't even agreed as to what he is doing, let alone whether his name really is the linguistic antecedent to the Latin 'persona', from which we have derived the concept of the person. I may not have solved it yet, but that tantalising glimpse of another possible avenue of research keeps me dreaming of a time when I will solve the Phersu enigma. In the meantime, I have used him as a symbol of passion for my website - follow what you believe in, be true to yourself, and Celebrate You.