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Barnebys HQ
Brahegatan 10
BOX 5038
114 37 Stockholm
All auctions / Sculptures / Olmec Greenstone Were-Jaguar Maskette Pendant w/ Gold Hoop
Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Olmec. A miniature maskette carved from mottled green and gray stone, the softly domed face pared to the essentials of the Olmec canon: a broad squared head, swollen cheeks, flaring lateral flanges standing in for ears, and a downturned trapezoidal mouth. Solid drill points mark the corners of the eyes, the nostrils, and the corners of the lips, a shorthand that models the features without a single incised outline. The face reads as a were-jaguar, the composite human-feline being that dominates Olmec iconography and is generally understood to signal transformation and supernatural power. Pierced at the crown and fitted with a later gold suspension hoop, tested at roughly 72.4 percent gold (about 17.4 karat), the maskette was likely worn against the body, perhaps as an amulet of rank or of spiritual protection. The were-jaguar is the most persistent image in Olmec art: a being with a cleft or flattened head, almond eyes, puffy infantile cheeks, and a downturned snarling mouth, read by scholars variously as a rain deity, a lineage ancestor, or a shaman caught mid-transformation into his feline co-essence. Greenstones, serpentine, jadeite, and related hard stones from the Motagua Valley and the highlands were prized above all other materials by Olmec patrons, their color associated with water, maize, and vital breath, and they travelled hundreds of kilometers from the Gulf Coast heartland at San Lorenzo and La Venta into Guerrero and the Central Highlands. Small drilled maskettes of this kind were worn on the body and later interred in caches and offerings, the personal end of a sculptural tradition that also produced the monumental basalt heads. Item # 203747
Estimate:£339.28
To the auctionView all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorSculptures
Estimate:
£339.28
ANNA PETRUS. BOKSTÖD, TENN OCH MÄSSING, UTFORMAT SOM LEJON, FÖR FIRMA
09/29/2026
£2,711.59
Est: £2,272.37
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KAI NIELSEN. SKULPTUR, "VENUS KALIPYGOS". TERRAKOTTA. FÖR P. IPSENS ENKE.
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