Costa Rican Jade Anthropomorphic Celt Pendant, Crosshatched Headband

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, ca. 500–1000 CE. A standing personage compressed into the blade of an axe, carved from mottled blue-green jade. The figure holds his arms tight to his sides, hands and toes marked by shallow incised lines, the columnar body tapering to a bit-like base. Drilled circular eyes, a wide angular nose, and a straight lipped mouth sit beneath a broad headband worked with crosshatching, its crown notched at the summit. A biconical suspension hole pierces the neck, so the pendant hung at the chest. Such celt pendants, often called axe-gods, married the form of a working tool to human likeness and likely served as emblems of rank and supernatural protection among the elite of Costa Rica's Atlantic and Central regions. Size: 5.5" W x 1.625" H (14.0 cm W x 4.1 cm H).

Costa Rican lapidaries had no metal tools. Jade and related greenstones were shaped by string sawing with cord and abrasive slurry, by solid and hollow drilling, and by patient polishing, techniques that make the crisp crosshatched band and the paired eye perforations far more laborious than they appear. Blanks were frequently cut from imported Motagua Valley jadeite reaching the isthmus through Maya exchange networks, and older Olmec heirloom pieces were sometimes resawn into local forms.

The axe-god type flourished during the Period V florescence, when jade served as the paramount prestige material before gold displaced it after roughly 700 CE. The union of celt and body is deliberate: the productive blade that clears forest and the human form that wields it become a single charged object, worn on the chest and, in excavated examples, interred with high-status dead.

Provenance: Collection of Jimmy Belilty, Miami. Acquired from Latin American Artist Carlos Poveda, Caracas and Paris, 1980 - 1990.

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Item #

73110

Condition
Surface deposits in the low carved areas. Intact, excellent condition.

Buyer's Premium
30%