Maya Cylinder Vase | Carved Pseudo-Glyph Band

Pre-Columbian, Mexico or Guatemala, Maya, ca. 500–800 CE. A tall ceramic cylinder rising from a flat base to a slightly flared rim, its buff-tan body banded below the lip with a carved register of blocky, cartouche-like glyphs, several filled with crosshatching and scroll elements. Below the frieze the wall carries a scattered field of painted tan-orange rings and rosettes, perhaps evoking jaguar pelage or cacao froth. Vessels of this shape served the Late Classic elite as drinking cups for frothed cacao, passed at feasts and interred with their owners. The carved band imitates the dedicatory Primary Standard Sequence found on painted counterparts, though the signs here appear largely pseudo-glyphic rather than fully readable. Size: 5.75" Diam x 8.875" H (14.6 cm Diam x 22.5 cm H).

Late Classic Maya cylinder vases were among the most socially charged objects a lord could own. Painted or carved examples routinely bear the Primary Standard Sequence, a formulaic dedicatory text naming the vessel type, its contents (most often kakaw, cacao, or atole), and sometimes its owner and the artist who made it. Carved-and-slipped cylinders, as opposed to polychrome-painted ones, cluster in the Chochola and Puuc regions of Yucatan and in the southern lowlands, where potters worked the leather-hard clay with modelling tools before firing. Where the incised signs resolve into repeated, non-linguistic shapes, scholars call them pseudo-glyphs: the visual prestige of writing invoked without a literate scribe, a common and revealing feature of provincial workshops serving a court-emulating clientele.

Provenance: Collection of Tom Carson, NYS., active 1970’s - early 2000’s, then by descent to family. Ex. Arte Primitivo auction, lot 418, early 2000’s.

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Item #

73079

Condition
Scattered root marks and surface deposits. General wear to the painted decoration, otherwise intact.

Buyer's Premium
30%