Uraba Gold Poporo Spout, Cast Trumpet Form, Colombia

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Uraba, ca. 800–1200 CE. A flaring trumpet of cast gold, drawn upward into a narrow cylindrical neck finished with a doubled, rolled lip. The neck carries a band of closely spaced fine-line ringing, a hallmark of the region's goldsmiths, achieved in the wax model before casting and left crisp against the burnished sweep of the body below. The spout originally crowned a gourd poporo, the lime flask carried by coca chewers throughout ancient Colombia; a dipping pin, wetted in the mouth, was drawn through this mouth to lift powdered lime into the quid. Such fittings turned a humble calabash into an emblem of rank, and gold, the metal of solar and shamanic power, was reserved for it. Size: 3.5" H (8.9 cm H); 63 gms.; 14.3K gold; XRF tested: 60% Gold, 5.5% silver, 34.5% copper.

Coca chewing, still practiced across the northern Andes, requires an alkali to release the leaf's alkaloids. The poporo answered that need: a small gourd of powdered burnt shell or limestone, sealed by a spout through which a slender pin was worked, its head repeatedly rubbed against the rim until the accumulated paste built the flanged collars seen on many surviving examples. The act was as much ritual as pharmacological, and among Colombian chiefdoms the gold-fitted poporo became a portable declaration of status, entering the grave with its owner.

XRF analysis reports an alloy of roughly 60 percent gold, 5.5 percent silver and 34.5 percent copper (about 14.3K), consistent with tumbaga, the copper-rich gold alloy favored across the Isthmo-Colombian world for its lower melting point, greater fluidity in the mold, and the warm rose-to-gold surface obtainable by depletion gilding.

Provenance: Estate of Diana Lofredo, NYC. By inheritance from Ron Nasser, NYC. Ex. Arte Primitivo Auction 55, September 2010, lot 49. Ex. Private Danish collection, acquired 1970’s.

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Item #

73150

Condition
A minor, small stable partially open crease in the upper portion of the neck, otherwise intact, overall excellent condition.

Buyer's Premium
30%