Maya Polychrome Dish with Abstract Bird Head RoundelPre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya,...
Maya Polychrome Dish with Abstract Bird Head RoundelPre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya, ca. 500–800 CE. A wide earthenware dish whose burnished orange slip glows beneath a confident brush. The interior floor carries a large roundel enclosing an abstract avian head, its eye rendered as a tight spiral, crested plumes above and below drawn in fine parallel hatching. Concentric black and red-orange bands frame the medallion, and a broad rim register repeats seven schematized birds in the shorthand of Late Classic lowland painters. The exterior is left unslipped, revealing a buff, lightly gritted paste and a low ring foot. Vessels of this scale served the elite table and the tomb alike, holding tamales or offerings before accompanying their owner into burial, the painted birds perhaps invoking the celestial messengers of Maya cosmology. Size: 12.5" Diam x 3" H (31.8 cm Diam x 7.6 cm H).
Avian imagery pervades Classic Maya painted ceramics. Long-billed, spiral-eyed birds of this type are usually read as manifestations of Itzam Ye (the Principal Bird Deity), the great celestial being who perches atop the world tree and mediates between the sky and the earthly plane. Reduced here to elegant contour and hatching, the motif belongs to a widespread lowland shorthand in which painters compressed a whole cosmological narrative into a single roundel and a repeating rim frieze.
Slip-painted service wares of this diameter were prestige goods, produced in palace workshops and circulated through elite exchange before ending as grave furniture. Their pigments are mineral, ground hematite and iron-rich clays fired in an oxidizing atmosphere, which accounts for the range from pale orange to deep rust visible across the surface.
Provenance: Collection of Dr. Reuven Livny, Israel. To family by descent. Acquired from Riverbend Gallery, GA., 10/11/2013. California collection prior, with copy of Riverbend certificate.
SHIPPING: We coordinate worldwide shipping in-house through specialist international forwarders experienced with fine art and antiquities customs manifests. International buyers must confirm, prior to bidding, that their country's customs authority will accept the item. All duties, taxes, clearance fees, and any costs arising from customs delays, seizures, re-export, returns, or loss in transit are the buyer's sole responsibility. Artemis assumes no liability for items refused entry, detained, or lost after export. We cannot ship ancient items to their country of origin (Egyptian to Egypt, Greek to Greece, etc.).
PAYMENT EXCEPTION: For clients not previously established with Artemis, payment for all gold, precious metal, and gemstone lots must be made by bank wire transfer or certified bank check/money order, without exception.
Item #73084Repaired from approximately nine large original pieces with restoration over most of the break lines. Center bird head is mostly refreshed, otherwise the remaining decoration is original.
Maya Polychrome Dish with Abstract Bird Head RoundelPre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya, ca. 500–800 CE. A wide earthenware dish whose burnished orange slip glows beneath a confident brush. The interior floor carries a large roundel enclosing an abstract avian head, its eye rendered as a tight spiral, crested plumes above and below drawn in fine parallel hatching. Concentric black and red-orange bands frame the medallion, and a broad rim register repeats seven schematized birds in the shorthand of Late Classic lowland painters. The exterior is left unslipped, revealing a buff, lightly gritted paste and a low ring foot. Vessels of this scale served the elite table and the tomb alike, holding tamales or offerings before accompanying their owner into burial, the painted birds perhaps invoking the celestial messengers of Maya cosmology. Size: 12.5" Diam x 3" H (31.8 cm Diam x 7.6 cm H).
Avian imagery pervades Classic Maya painted ceramics. Long-billed, spiral-eyed birds of this type are usually read as manifestations of Itzam Ye (the Principal Bird Deity), the great celestial being who perches atop the world tree and mediates between the sky and the earthly plane. Reduced here to elegant contour and hatching, the motif belongs to a widespread lowland shorthand in which painters compressed a whole cosmological narrative into a single roundel and a repeating rim frieze.
Slip-painted service wares of this diameter were prestige goods, produced in palace workshops and circulated through elite exchange before ending as grave furniture. Their pigments are mineral, ground hematite and iron-rich clays fired in an oxidizing atmosphere, which accounts for the range from pale orange to deep rust visible across the surface.
Provenance: Collection of Dr. Reuven Livny, Israel. To family by descent. Acquired from Riverbend Gallery, GA., 10/11/2013. California collection prior, with copy of Riverbend certificate.
SHIPPING: We coordinate worldwide shipping in-house through specialist international forwarders experienced with fine art and antiquities customs manifests. International buyers must confirm, prior to bidding, that their country's customs authority will accept the item. All duties, taxes, clearance fees, and any costs arising from customs delays, seizures, re-export, returns, or loss in transit are the buyer's sole responsibility. Artemis assumes no liability for items refused entry, detained, or lost after export. We cannot ship ancient items to their country of origin (Egyptian to Egypt, Greek to Greece, etc.).
PAYMENT EXCEPTION: For clients not previously established with Artemis, payment for all gold, precious metal, and gemstone lots must be made by bank wire transfer or certified bank check/money order, without exception.
Item #73084Repaired from approximately nine large original pieces with restoration over most of the break lines. Center bird head is mostly refreshed, otherwise the remaining decoration is original.
