Pair of Paracas Pottery Bowls w/ Incised Patterns

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Paracas culture, ca. 800 to 100 BCE. A lovely pair of grayware bowls, each displaying a slightly convex base and straight walls that rise to an annular rim. Both incised with decorative patterns along their exterior walls, the larger bowl presents a rectangular motif embellished by vertical striation with added red and black pigments. Alternatively, the smaller bowl exhibits a pair of felines shown in profile with pointed ears, thick tails, and annular eyes, separated by 2 series of vertical stripes with horizontal zigzagged lines, all additionally adorned with red, green, and yellow pigments. Size (of largest): 4.125" in diameter x 1.5" H (10.5 cm x 3.8 cm)

Little is known about the Paracas people, and what little we do know comes from a 1920s archaeological excavation of the Paracas Cavernas, shaft tombs containing multiple burials, many of which contained ceramics like this one, probably for holding offerings or provisioning the dead in the afterlife. Their iconography is linear and stylistic, based on formal figures whose species, when zoomorphic, often cannot be identified. Motifs on their ceramics mirror those on the textiles that they used to wrap their dead and probably represent gods or mythical figures of power.

Provenance: ex-private Drimmer collection, Florida, USA, before 1965

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#165174
Condition Report: Larger has collection label on interior wall and is repaired from at least 4 large pieces with break lines visible and minor area of restoration to basin and rim. Smaller has collection labels on base with restoration to rim and center of basin. Both have expected nicks and chips throughout, commensurate with age. Otherwise, both are very nice with impressive remaining pigments.