Native American, Southwestern United States, Colorado, Anasazi/Ancestral Puebloans, Mesa Verde type, ca. 1200 to 1300 CE. A fine example of a pottery mug made in the Mesa Verde Black-on-White tradition in what is today southwestern Colorado, its surface decorated with vertical bands of black - now faded to a yellow-gray - painted on the buff white surface. Vessels like this one were made from gray or white paste with angular fragments of temper and this one has a pearly gray-white slip that was then overpainted with black pigment made from carbon. They were made by people who lived in cliff dwellings like those seen at Mesa Verde National Park - indeed at the Park, there is a large house containing 94 rooms, a kiva, and a water reservoir, known as Mug House because its European discoverers, Charles Mason and the Wetherill brothers, found three mugs hung in one of the rooms from a rope of woven yucca. Size: 2.75" W x 3" H (7 cm x 7.6 cm)

Provenance: private South Carolina, USA collection; ex-Artemis Gallery, Louisville, Colorado, USA, July 25th, 2019, lot 72; ex-Joan Shaw collection, bought in 1971; loaned to the Mesa Verde Museum, Mesa Verde, Colorado, USA, accession number 591, catalogue number 8473, 1962 to 1970; ex-Bill Mitchell collection, Cortez, Colorado, USA, acquired from 1958 to 1962

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#171181

A few small chips from the rim, otherwise in very nice condition with great remaining pigment. Old collection number handwritten on base.