Chupicuaro Tripod Rattle Bowl with Striped Legs - Ex Peter Wray

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Guanajuato, Chupicuaro. A shallow tripod bowl with a rounded, flaring basin. It is burnished in a warm red slip and stands on three long, tapering legs that splay outward. The legs are hollow, and each has a vertical slit that let air escape during firing and also gives them a rattle function: loose clay pellets inside would chime whenever the bowl was lifted or set down. Cream paint wraps the legs in bold rings, a crisp cream zigzag runs around the inner lip, and fine incised grooves circle the exterior just below the rim. The design is pared down to slip, stripe, and stance, and it still reads as distinctly Chupicuaro. Vessels like this probably served at the table or in ritual, and many were placed as offerings in burials. Chupicuaro takes its name from a village on the Lerma River in southern Guanajuato. Salvage excavations there in the 1940s, carried out before the site was flooded by the Solis dam, recovered hundreds of burials with rich ceramic offerings. The culture's red-slipped wares with cream or black geometric decoration, along with its tripod and rattle-legged forms, spread across the Bajio and are thought to have shaped later ceramic traditions in western and central Mexico. Item # 205637

Estimate:£378.07

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