Tehuacan Valley Nahua Pottery Brazier Xochipili

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Tehuacan Valley, Nahua culture, Post-Classic period, ca. 1300 to 1521 CE. A hand-built pottery brazier depicting a seated effigy of Xochipili, the god of art, beauty, dance, song, and games. The lower brazier body is cylindrical in form and features bent limbs, knobby shoulders, and traces of red and citrine pigment. The effigy lid resembles the head of Xochipili with semicircular eyes, a perky nose, a fanged mouth, tall ears, and a smooth forehead, all beneath a tall, vertically striated headdress. When copal incense burned within the brazier body, the head was placed atop the neck so the smoke could exit the mouth of the deity. This signified the prayers uttered by shamans coming out of an individual of authority with the gods. Size: 6.375" W x 14.625" H (16.2 cm x 37.1 cm)

The Nahua people of the Tehuacan Valley - in the southeast corner of the state of Puebla near Oaxaca - produced a myriad of unique and unusual censer covers during the last few centuries prior to the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1521 CE. The brazier is a censer created to hold and slowly conflagrate incenses. The incense most-commonly used throughout the Nahua peoples was a sticky tree resin known as copal that yielded copious amounts of smoke when burnt. Tehuacan censer covers, referred to as "xantiles," typically took the form of a hollow anthropomorphic figure and were placed atop the rim of a censer. The smoked produced from the copal incense escaped through the gaping mouth of the figure and was thought to be a symbolic means of communicating with the gods. The figures and mouths took a variety of forms, from simple human depictions to fantastical figures with ornate costumes.

Provenance: ex-private lifetime collection of Dr. Saul Tuttman and Dr. Gregory Siskind, New York, New York, USA, acquired in the 1980s

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#149195
Condition Report: Professional repairs and restoration to feet, hands, and neckline of brazier body as well as neck, ears, fangs, chin, eyebrows, and headdress of effigy lid, with resurfacing and overpainting along new material and break lines. Effigy head permanently attached to brazier body. Nicks, abrasions, and encrustations to brazier body and head, with fading and chipping to original pigmentation, and softening to some finer details. Nice earthen deposits and traces of original pigment throughout.