Pair of Exhibited Nayarit San Sebastian Pottery Figures

Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Nayarit, San Sebastian type, Protoclassic Period, ca. 100 BCE to 250 CE. A fine set of two hand-built pottery seated figures with highly burnished surfaces and broad legs. The warrior leans slightly forward with broad shoulders, holds a knob-headed club against the corresponding shoulder, and grasps a petite olla. Warrior figures like this example are typically clad in padded wraps or barrel-shaped cuirasses, so a nude warrior is rather unusual. Next is a nude female who holds both arms to her abdomen beneath perky breasts and displays six bulges on each stocky shoulder indicative of 'ritual scarification pellets.' Both visages feature puffy eyes and tab-shaped ears, and the surfaces are adorned with red-orange slip. Size of largest (female): 11" W x 23.8" H (27.9 cm x 60.5 cm)

Clay figures like these are the only remains that we have today of a sophisticated and unique culture in West Mexico. They made no above-ground monuments or sculptures, at least that we know of, which is in strong contrast to developments elsewhere in ancient Mesoamerica. Instead, their tombs were their lasting works of art: skeletons arrayed radially with their feet positioned inward, and clay offerings, like these, placed alongside the walls facing inward, near the skulls. Large effigies like these would most likely have flanked the entrance to a tomb in a way that archaeologists have interpreted as guarding. Some scholars have connected these dynamic sculptures of the living as a strong contrast to the skeletal remains whose space they shared, as if they mediated between the living and the dead.

Both items were exhibited in the University of St. Thomas Art Gallery.

For a strikingly similar example of a seated male figure without a stool, 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, 1989, p. 94, fig. 39.

A stylistically similar example of a tattooed male figure seated on a stool, of a larger size, hammered for $27,500 at Sotheby's, New York "Art of Africa, Oceania, and The Americas" auction (May 15, 2017, lot 85).

Provenance: ex-private collection of the late Father Bader, University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas, USA; exhibited in the University of St. Thomas Art Gallery, acquired prior to 2000

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#154405
Condition Report: Both figures are repaired from multiple pieces, with chips along some areas, and resurfacing with overpainting along most break lines. Both figures have nicks and abrasions, fading to original pigmentation, softening to some finer details, and light encrustations. Nice earthen deposits, manganese blooms, and remains of original pigment throughout.