Mississippian Blackware Flatfish Effigy Bottle (Auction 2026-06-05, Lot 102)

$642.50

A burnished blackware bottle modeled in the form of a flatfish, its compressed, lenticular body capturing the asymmetry that distinguishes flounder and their kin from other denizens of Mississippi waterways. The potter has rendered the species with naturalistic acuity: the head twists sideways toward the surface of the world, the dorsal fin runs along one flank while the anal and pelvic fins emerge from the other, mirroring the singular anatomy of a creature that swims on its side and gazes upward with both migrated eyes. A tall cylindrical neck rises from the swollen ovoid body, the form characteristic of Late Mississippian water bottles produced across the central and southeastern reaches of the Mississippi Valley.

The vessel’s surface, smoothed to a soft graphite sheen, carries the carbon-rich patina typical of reduction firing. Fish effigies occupy a recurring place within Mississippian iconography, where aquatic beings served as messengers of the Beneath World in the tripartite cosmology shared across the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. Such bottles likely accompanied burials or held ritual liquids, their zoomorphic forms binding the contents to the watery realm from which life and fertility were believed to flow.

Provenance: private Colorado, USA Collection; ex-private Denver, Colorado, USA collection; ex-private Flushing, New York and Ridgeway, Colorado, USA collection, acquired October 2016 via Selkirk Auctioneers & Appraisers, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Condition: Very Good. Professionally repaired with restoration over break lines; all done expertly and difficult to detect. Two chips to rim and some light abrasions as shown. Otherwise, very nice presentation with good detail and rich earthen deposits to interior.