Costa Rican Stone Effigy Bowl | Parrot with Hooked Beak

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, ca. 500–1000 CE. A parrot alights on the rim of its own body: this small vessel is carved from cream porphyritic stone shot through with russet inclusions, the mottling reading almost as plumage. The projecting head thrusts forward with a strongly hooked beak and large recessed round eyes, while flattened wings sweep out as flanges to either side and a fanned tail closes the rear. Short folded legs and clawed feet raise the rounded basin clear of the surface. The interior is hollowed to a shallow bowl, its walls thinned by patient abrasion. Such stone effigy vessels were prestige objects, likely used for offerings or the preparation of small quantities of pigment or other precious substances rather than for daily food service. Size: 5.5" W x 3" H x 4.5" D (14.0 cm W x 7.6 cm H x 11.4 cm D).

Macaws and parrots occupied a privileged place in the iconography of Costa Rica and lower Central America, their scarlet and gold plumage associated with the sun, with fertility, and with the elite exchange networks that moved feathers, gold, and jade across the isthmus. Rendering the bird in hard stone, a material demanding days of pecking, grinding, and abrasion with sand and cord, was itself a statement of status: the labor invested far exceeds anything a ceramic equivalent would require.

Costa Rican lapidaries worked without metal tools, shaping volcanic and sedimentary stones by percussion and long abrasion, then finishing surfaces to a soft sheen. The naturally variegated stone chosen here, with its swirls of brown and rust against cream, appears deliberately selected so that the geology supplies the bird's markings.

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

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Item #

73122

Condition
Intact, excellent condition.

Buyer's Premium
30%