Nayarit Ixtlan Del Rio Polychrome Figures Matched Pair

Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Nayarit, Ixtlan Del Rio, Protoclassic period, ca. 100 BCE to 250 CE. A wonderful pair of matching, hollow-built pottery figures of a seated man and woman. Both figures sit with bent legs and have sinuous arms bent at the elbow, broad shoulders, upright postures, and intricate linear and zigzagging negative resist motifs in hues of cream, espresso, and orange-red. The nude male wears a simple loincloth around his waist and in one hand holds a long-handled fan with a bullseye motif. The woman has perky breasts and dons an intricately decorated skirt while grasping a petite olla in her right hand. Both faces bear impressed eyes encircled with pigment, a ring-adorned nose, and tall ears with discoid ear spools, all beneath simple headbands. The blank stares shown from each countenance suggests these figures are experiencing a hallucinogenic trance brought on by the contents of the woman's cup. Size of largest (male): 5" W x 7.9" H (12.7 cm x 20.1 cm)

For a pair of stylistically similar Ixtlan Del Rio figures, please see: Kan, Michael, Clement Meighan, and H.B. Nicholson. "Sculpture of Ancient West Mexico: Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima | A Catalogue of the Proctor Stafford Collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art." Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1989, p. 81, figs. 17a-b.

Provenance: ex-Jerry Tuttman collection, Asbury Park, New Jersey, USA, acquired between the 1950s and the 1980s

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#153071 Dimensions: Condition Report: Male has repairs to right arm and fan, left ear spool, nose, and both legs; female has repairs to olla, nose, one leg, and area on back of head; with resurfacing and overpainting along most break lines, and light adhesive residue along male arm. Both figures have light encrustations, fading to original pigmentation, abrasions to limbs, bodies, and heads, and a couple of stable hairline fissures that are not detrimental to the figures' stability. Nice earthen deposits and great traces of original pigment throughout. Old inventory label beneath base of male.