Nazca Polychrome Vessels | Diver Effigy and Creature Beaker

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Nazca, ca. 100–600 CE. A pair of small polychrome slip-painted earthenware vessels from the south coast of Peru. The first is an anthropomorphic effigy jar, its modeled head crowned by a banded fillet, the rounded body painted with netting and geometric panels and fitted with a tapering rear spout joined by a bridge handle to the back of the head, likely representing a diver gathering his nets. The second is a slightly flaring beaker banded in cream, red, and dark brown: an upper register of abstract creature heads with wide staring eyes above a lower frieze of pendant "tongue" forms. Both carry the burnished mineral slips for which Nazca potters are known, fired in a single pass to a palette of remarkable range. Beaker: 3.5" Diam x 2.5" H (8.9 cm Diam x 6.4 cm H); Vessel: 3.25" W x 2.875" H x 2.75" D (8.3 cm W x 7.3 cm H x 7.0 cm D).

Nazca potters worked without glaze, building their palette instead from finely ground mineral slips applied before firing and burnished to a low sheen, a technique that yielded as many as a dozen distinct colors on a single vessel and set their wares apart from every other Andean tradition. The bridge-spout form seen here is a south-coast signature inherited from Paracas and carried through the whole Nazca sequence.

Marine subjects recur throughout Nazca art, unsurprising for a people whose desert valleys met one of the richest fisheries on earth. Divers, netted catches, and fish appear alongside the trophy heads and masked beings of the ceremonial repertoire. The staring, fanged faces banding the beaker belong to that second world: highly abstracted mythical creatures whose eyes and headdress rays are reduced to a repeating decorative rhythm.

Early collection numbers are inked on the interior of the beaker.

Provenance: Ex. Collection of Leo and Beatrice Drimmer, acquired in the 1960’s. To family by descent.

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Item #

73203

Condition
Intact. Some minor paint wear, mostly around the rim, otherwise intact.

Buyer's Premium
30%