Lot 67A
Pre-Columbian, Maya culture, Guatemala, El Peten, Tikal area, Late Classic Period, ca. 600 to 800 CE. A wonderful pottery plate decorated in a style known as "Tikal Dancer" - noted for its prominent depiction of a dancing Maize god featured in the central tondo and supported by a trio of 3 hollow rattle feet with a band of projecting steppe motif encircling the base. Using rapid brushstrokes, pottery painters from the region around Uaxactun and Tikal, important cities in the Peten region, created lively portraits of the dancing Maize God. Elements of the dancer's costume swing as the figure twists and swirls, perhaps evoking maize stalks waving in the breeze. Dozens of similarly decorated plates are known, attesting to the popularity of this design. The signs in the encircling band are decorative, unreadable imitations of writing. Size: 13.5" Diameter x 3.5" H (34.3 cm x 8.9 cm)
Elaborate plates like this one were designed to be instantly distinguishable from those used for everyday eating or drinking - not just in decoration, but also in quantity produced, making these a much rarer find than a piece of domestic pottery. Instead, a bowl like this one would be ritually "sacrificed" by having a hole put through its center, as seen in this example. It would then be placed into a tomb as an offering.
For the Maya, extraordinary ceramic items like this plate were gifted to elite individuals, akin to the gifts exchanged between high profile dignitaries today. Plates were a functional gift, their iconography created by artist/scribes who came from elite families and who took pains to recreate the stories of Mayan mythology and religion as well as to depict royal and godly personages in their artwork. These depictions reinforced the ruling ideology and reminded the viewer of what was valuable in Mayan society. Today, they teach us about the stories that were important to the Maya and also give us clues to how elite people lived and dressed. Scholars have painstakingly worked to decipher the meaning of the iconography and glyphs painted on cylinder jars and we know much more about them than we did even twenty years ago.
Cf. de Young Legion of Honor Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (2022.38.12), Princeton University Art Museum (y1979-62), and Museum of Fine Arts Boston (1987.708).
Provenance: private D. C. collection, California, USA; D. C. is an Emmy Award winning Hollywood writer and Executive Producer, collected before 2000
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#189444
- Condition: No longer functions as a rattle. Professionally repaired and restored with repainting over some break lines; others visible. Kill hole with chipping at center, likely from when it was discovered. Some nicks and abrasions to surface as shown. Otherwise, nice presentation with good remaining pigments and detail. Rich earthen deposits to surface.
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