Mississippian Pottery Long-Neck Water Bottle, Arkansas (Auction 2026-06-05, Lot 99)

$449.75

A long-necked earthenware bottle of compressed globular body, rising from a softly rounded base into a tall, near-cylindrical neck with a plain everted lip. The buff-to-grey surface is mottled with smoky fire-clouds, ghostly grey blooms that drift across the shoulder as a record of open-pit firing, where reduction and oxidation traded places against the vessel’s curve. Modest in ornament and confident in form, the bottle exemplifies the utilitarian elegance achieved by potters of the late prehistoric Mississippian world, whose alluvial-clay wares, often shell-tempered, served as containers for water and other liquids drawn from the rivers and oxbow lakes of the lower Mississippi Valley. Reportedly recovered in Lee County, Arkansas, the piece belongs to a regional tradition that flourished across the St. Francis and lower White River basins, where village potters produced quantities of such bottles for domestic use and, ultimately, for placement with the dead. The unbroken silhouette, a flattened sphere balanced on the vertical accent of its neck, distills the Mississippian potter’s instinct for proportion: function articulated as quiet sculpture.

Provenance: private Colorado, USA Collection; ex-private Denver, Colorado, USA collection; ex-private Flushing, New York and Ridgeway, Colorado, USA collection

Condition: Very Good. Some professional restoration to rim, as well as nicks, pitting, and abrasions as shown. Otherwise, very nice presentation. Old collection label with find site on underside of base.