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All auctions / Porcelain & Pottery / Moche & Recuay Pottery Figural Vessels - Seated Dignitary & Face Spout Jar
Pre-Columbian, North Coast Peru, Moche and Recuay. A pair of north-coastal Peruvian earthenware vessels, each built around the human face. The first, once a Moche stirrup-spout bottle, models a seated dignitary with hands resting on drawn-up knees, a stepped turban wound about the brow, and a broad collar painted in cream and iron-red bands; the modeling of cheekbone, lip, and knuckle carries the portrait sensibility for which Moche potters remain unmatched. The second, a Recuay jar, sets a small molded face upon its cylindrical neck, ears flanked by round spools, brow crowned with a painted zigzag fillet, while a flat ribbon handle arcs from neck to shoulder above panels of resist-painted geometry. Both were likely burial furniture, accompanying the dead as portraits of rank rather than mere containers. The Moche (ca. 100 to 800 CE) and Recuay (ca. 200 to 700 CE) were close neighbors and occasional rivals, the former holding the coastal valleys of the Peruvian north, the latter the highland Callejon de Huaylas above them. Their ceramics answer one another: Moche potters worked in press-molded redware finished with cream slip and fineline painting, favoring the stirrup spout as the signature closed form; Recuay workshops preferred a white kaolin-rich paste and negative resist decoration, in which designs were masked and the surrounding surface smoked to a dark ground. Face-neck jars with strap handles are a Recuay hallmark, the vessel becoming a body with the spout as its head, a conceit that recurs across Andean ceramic thought for two millennia. Item # 204286
Estimate:$350
To the auctionView all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorPorcelain & Pottery
Estimate:
$350
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