This is the rating and price for Pair Of Exhibited Nayarit San Sebastian Pottery Figures, 1989

Description : Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Nayarit, San Sebastian type, Protoclassic Period, ca. 100 BCE to 250 CE. A fine set of two hand-built pottery seated figures with highly burnished surfaces and broad legs. The warrior leans slightly forward with broad shoulders, holds a knob-headed club against the corresponding shoulder, and grasps a petite olla. Warrior figures like this example are typically clad in padded wraps or barrel-shaped cuirasses, so a nude warrior is rather unusual. Next is a nude female who holds both arms to her abdomen beneath perky breasts and displays six bulges on each stocky shoulder indicative of 'ritual scarification pellets.' Both visages feature puffy eyes and tab-shaped ears, and the surfaces are adorned with red-orange slip. Size of largest (female): 11 W x 23.8 H (27.9 cm x 60.5 cm) Clay figures like these are the only remains that we have today of a sophisticated and unique culture in West Mexico. They made no above-ground monuments or sculptures, at least that we know of, which is in strong contrast to developments elsewhere in ancient Mesoamerica. Instead, their tombs were their lasting works of art: skeletons arrayed radially with their feet positioned inward, and clay offerings, like these, placed alongside the walls facing inward, near the skulls. Large effigies like these would most likely have flanked the entrance to a tomb in a way that archaeologists have interpreted as guarding. Some scholars have connected these dynamic sculptures of the living as a strong contrast to the skeletal remains whose space they shared, as if they mediated between the living and the dead. Both items were exhibited in the University of St. Thomas Art Gallery. For a strikingly similar example of a seated male figure without a stool, please see: Kan, Michael, Clement Meighan, and H.B. Nicholson. Sculpture of Ancient West Mexico: Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima | A Catalogue of the Proctor Stafford Collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989, p. 94, fig. 39. A stylistically similar example of a tattooed male figure seated on a stool, of a larger size, hammered for $27,500 at Sotheby's, New York Art of Africa, Oceania, and The Americas auction (May 15, 2017, lot 85). Provenance: ex-private collection of the late Father Bader, University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas, USA, exhibited in the University of St. Thomas Art Gallery, acquired prior to 2000 All items legal to buy/sell under U.S. Statute covering cultural patrimony Code 2600, CHAPTER 14, and are guaranteed to be as described or your money back. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. We ship worldwide and handle all shipping in-house for your convenience. #154405
Price: 3 795.00 USD It's free to register now to view!
Estimate (low-high) : 6000 USD-9000 USD It's free to register now to view!

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