Costa Rican Jade Double-Headed Pendant, Inverted Face

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, ca. 500–1000 CE. A compact pendant carved from semi-translucent blue-green jade, worked into two human heads set back to back, the lower one inverted so the amulet reads correctly whichever way it is turned. Both faces are defined with shallow incision and drilled points for eyes and nostrils, the mouths cut as narrow slots, and each head wears a tall conical cap or headdress rendered in smooth planes. A biconical suspension hole, drilled from both sides in the customary manner, pierces the body for cord. Personal ornaments of this kind carried status as well as adornment across the Costa Rican jade-working zone, and the doubled, opposed faces likely encoded a dual or transformational idea rather than a portrait. Mounted on a custom display base. Size: 2.75" H (7.0 cm H).

Costa Rica sustained one of the most accomplished lapidary traditions in the Americas between roughly 300 and 800 CE, concentrated in the Atlantic Watershed, Central Highlands, and Nicoya regions. Lacking metal tools, carvers reduced hard jadeite and related greenstones with string saws, sand abrasives, and hollow-reed drills, techniques that account for the biconical perforations and the crisp, shallow grooving seen on ornaments of this type. Much of the raw material appears to derive from the Motagua Valley sources in Guatemala, arriving through long-distance exchange, and green stone was valued across the region for its associations with water, maize, and fertility. Janiform and bicephalic pendants recur in the Costa Rican corpus, where the doubling of a face is generally read as a statement about duality, reciprocity, or shamanic transformation rather than as portraiture of a specific individual.

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

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Item #

73114

Condition
Intact, excellent condition.

Buyer's Premium
30%