Rare Maya Pottery Shrimp / Lobster Vessel

Pre-Columbian, southern Mexico and Guatemala, Maya Late Classic Period, ca. 550 to 900 CE. A rare, burnished terracotta vessel in the form of a crustacean, either a shrimp or langostino ("small lobster" in Spanish), with anthropomorphic hands grasping a snouted mouth. The vessel, colored in hues of beige, orange, and burgundy, displays protruding eyes in a cone-shaped head, a set of four conjoined legs on each side of a bulbous shelled body, with a flared opening on top of the back, and a paddle-shaped "v-notch" tail with two miniature stabilizing flippers on either side. Symbolically, crustaceans and other shellfish were representative of the underworld and the cycles of water and the atmosphere, life and death, and rebirth and rejuvenation. A very fine example of animal-centric Maya art! Size: 10" W x 2.75" H (25.4 cm x 7 cm)

Provenance: ex-private T. Misenhimer collection, Beverly Hills, California, USA, collected from 1970-2008

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#151834
Condition Report: Expertly repaired and restored from multiple pieces. This is very well done and almost impossible to see. Nice deposits on surface.