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Pre-Columbian, Maya territories, Ulua Valley Honduras, Late Classic, ca. 550 to 900 CE. Wow! A wonderful polychrome tripod vessel from the Maya of Ulua Valley, the body skillfully decorated with three vertically oriented rectangular panels featuring woven mat glyphs, alternating with three hemispheric panels that each house a finely delineated seated lord or scribe wearing an elaborate feathered headdress. A register of repeated glyphoids encircles the in-curved neck, and a large glyph comprised of intersecting arrows, most likely representing the cardinal directions, with curvilinear elements occupying the interstices, graces the concave center of the underside which is surrounded by three rectangular feet. Size: 7.5″ in diameter x 5″ H (19 cm x 12.7 cm)
For the Maya, extraordinary ceramic vases like this example were gifted to elite individuals, akin to the gifts exchanged between high profile dignitaries today. Cylinders were a functional gift, created by artist/scribes who came from elite families and who took pains to recreate the stories of Mayan mythology and religion as well as to depict royal and godly personages in their artwork. This artwork reinforced the ruling ideology and reminded the viewer of what was valuable in Mayan society. Today, they teach us about the stories that were important to the Maya and also give us clues to how elite people lived and dressed. Scholars have painstakingly worked to decipher the meaning of the iconography and glyphs painted on cylinder jars and we know much more about them than we did even twenty years ago.
Condition: Section of rim repaired with restoration around the break lines. Chip to corner of one foot. Normal surface wear commensurate with age, but vast majority of painted decoration is vivid. Liberal manganese deposits grace areas of the interior and exterior.
Provenance: ex-private Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA collection of C. Webster acquired around 2000
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