Bring your auction to collectors worldwide!
Get listed nowBy subscribing, you are agreeing to the privacy policy. Unsubscribe anytime.
Barnebys HQ
Brahegatan 10
BOX 5038
114 37 Stockholm
All auctions / Ethnographic / Proto-Maya Terracotta Rattle Figure, Standing Female
Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Maya. A standing female figure modeled in buff terracotta, hollow-bodied and doubling as a rattle whose clay pellets whisper when shaken. She stands nude save for her ornament: a broad ridged headband crowns her rounded face, rosette earspools flank her cheeks, a small nose ring pierces her septum, and a beaded necklace rings her throat. Her features are gently swollen, with heavy-lidded ovoid eyes, their pupils punched by a drill, above a broad nose and pursed lips. Her arms spread from the shoulders, hands turned outward to rest against her thighs, framing open voids at the waist. The stout legs meet wide feet that taper to two small points, a tripod-like device that lets her stand unaided. Such rattle-figures likely served in ritual sound-making, perhaps tied to fertility or ceremonial performance. Ceramic rattles were widespread across Mesoamerica, where sound itself carried ritual weight. Enclosed within the hollow body, fired clay pellets transformed the figure into an instrument, its voice summoned in dance, procession, or funerary rite. Female figures adorned only with jewelry, headband, earspools, nose ornament, and necklace, recur throughout the Maya lowlands and may allude to fertility, ancestry, or the idealized human form rather than any single named deity. Item # 203702
Estimate:$300
To the auctionView all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorEthnographic
Estimate:
$300
Bring your auction to collectors worldwide!
Get listed now
