Mississippian Caddo Taylor Incised Blackware Bottle with Hook Motifs (Auction 2026-06-05, Lot 98)

$642.50

A gracefully swelling bottle of burnished dark earthenware, its body rising from a rounded base into a constricted neck capped by a thickened, everted lipped rim. The exterior carries the unmistakable vocabulary of Taylor Incised ware, with fluid scroll-and-hook designs trailing across the shoulder in lightly cut lines that curl back upon themselves in the rhythmic curvilinear motifs favored by Caddo potters of the Red River drainage. The surface retains a soft sheen from careful polishing before firing, and earthen accretions still cling to the lower body, evidence of long burial. Bottles of this gourd-like silhouette were produced across the Caddo homelands of present-day east Texas, southwest Arkansas, northwest Louisiana, and southeast Oklahoma, and were likely employed in mortuary and ceremonial contexts, deposited with the dead as containers for liquids or precious substances. The hook motif, sometimes interpreted as a cosmological reference to wind, water, or the path of the sun, remains one of the most distinctive signatures of Caddo ceramic art.

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

Condition: Good. Rim and base have been professionally repaired with restoration and resurfacing over break lines. Some nicks and abrasions to surface as shown. Otherwise, nice presentation with good remains of incised decoration. Old inventory number (DWI.17674) on underside of base.