19th C. Piapoco / Guahibo Terracotta Figural Water Jar - Mucura

South America, eastern Colombia, Llanos Orientales, Orinoco basin, Piapoco or Guahibo (Sikuani) people. A hand-built earthenware jar shaped as a standing woman, her body doubling as the vessel's chamber. The rounded lower half, swelling into wide hips, forms the reservoir, while raised breasts and a torso rise above it toward a serene face with a heavy brow, long nose, and softly modeled mouth. Small articulated ears project from either side of the head, and at the back a ridged ponytail falls down the verso. Arms bend at the elbow so the hands rest upon the hips, forming a pair of functional handles, and the crown of the head opens to the hollow interior. Faint traces of black linear motifs still map the burnished surface, ghosts of the original decoration. Known variously as a mucura, pimpina, or alcarraza, such anthropomorphic jars held water or chicha in the daily and social life of the Orinoco Llanos, uniting utility with the quiet dignity of the female form. Among the riverine and savanna peoples of the Orinoco basin, the anthropomorphic water jar is a long-lived tradition. The mucura (also pimpina or alcarraza) kept liquid cool through the slow sweat of its unglazed walls, and figural examples cast the vessel as a female body, the hips as the belly of the jar and the mouth at the crown. Chicha, a fermented beverage central to communal gatherings, was among the liquids such vessels carried, tying the object to hospitality and ritual sociability as much as to domestic labor. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 203641

Estimate:$225

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