Inca Painted Wood Kero | Figural Panels, Parrots

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Inca, ca. 1400–1521 CE. A carved hardwood kero of corseted profile, waisted at the middle and flaring to a wide drinking rim. Incised outlines carry inlaid resinous polychrome in red, green, cream, black, and yellow across three registers. The upper band holds two rectangular panels, each with a frontal human figure in tunic and headdress flanked by paired parrots and flowering stems. A central band runs with stepped chevrons and lozenges, and the lower band bears four large blossoming plants. Keros were made and used in pairs for the ritual consumption of chicha, exchanged in acts of reciprocity between Andean lords and their guests, the vessel itself a diplomatic instrument as much as a cup. Size: 5.625" Diam x 4.375" H (14.3 cm Diam x 11.1 cm H).

The polychrome technique here is mopa mopa, a resin harvested from the Elaeagia pastoensis tree of the Colombian highlands, kneaded, tinted with mineral pigments, stretched into sheets, and pressed into shallow incisions cut in the wood. The medium reached Cusco through long-distance trade and gave Andean woodworkers a lacquer-like palette that ceramic slip could not match.

Figural registers of this kind, with frontal personages, parrots, and flowering plants, belong largely to the colonial continuation of the kero tradition, when Andean elites kept commissioning the vessels under Spanish rule and their imagery absorbed rainforest fauna and heraldic conventions. Ancient repairs of the sort seen here, with drilled holes and tied bindings, testify to how highly the object was valued: a cracked kero was mended rather than discarded.

Provenance: Collection of Dr. Reuven Livny, Israel. To family by descent. Acquired from Arte Xibalba, FL., 8/24/2010. Copy of invoice.

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Item #

73217

Condition
Two long stable hair lines which were repaired in the ancient technique, with drilled and tied bands, and a rim band.

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