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Pre-Columbian, Peru, Paracas culture, ca. 800 to 100 BCE. A thick-walled ceramic bowl with low, vertical sides and an incised register of a fantastical creature repeated around the exterior. The incised lines are filled with pale red cinnabar. The figures are vaguely zoomorphic, diamond forms around three round circles that resemble eyes connected by narrow lines from which project linear shapes that may be feathers or bent legs, three on the upper side, two on the lower. Size: 9.6″ W x 2.9″ H (24.4 cm x 7.4 cm)
Little is known about the Paracas people, and what little we do know comes from a 1920s archaeological excavation of the Paracas Cavernas, shaft tombs containing multiple burials, many of which contained ceramics like this one, probably for holding offerings or provisioning the dead in the afterlife. Their iconography is linear and stylistic, based on formal figures whose species, when zoomorphic, often cannot be identified. Motifs on their ceramics mirror those on the textiles that they used to wrap their dead and probably represent gods or mythical figures of power.
Condition: Repaired and restored from multiple pieces, with overpainting along repair lines; repairs are well done and difficult to discern. Small areas of encrustation and root marks on unrepaired surfaces.
Provenance: ex Stendahl Gallery, Los Angles, California, USA, collection acquired in the 1950s
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