Pre-Columbian, Southern Peru, Ica Valley, Paracas culture, ca. 700 BCE to 100 CE. A stunning pottery bowl hand-built, painted, and etched with astounding and adorable feline motifs on exterior surfaces. The vessel is of a round bottomed but stable form with impressively thin walls and rim. The incised decorations around the exterior walls represent a series of stylized Pampas or Andean mountain cats! The surface is painted in green, red, black, white, and ochre - these colors are a mixture of minerals and vegetal pigments bound with a resin that was painted post firing. The resin melts with heat - so this bowl was certainly not intended for utilitarian cooking or regular use. While the ferocious and massive jaguars are popular motifs South American art, the coastal plains of the Paracas were habitat for the much smaller Pampas or mountain cats, appreciated by farmers for their mousing and pest control. Size: 6" Diameter x 3" H (15.2 cm x 7.6 cm)

Provenance: ex-Marc Amiguet Schmitt estate, Amiguet's Ancient Art, Evansville, Indiana, USA, acquired prior to January 1, 2010

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#173388

Tl hole on base and second Tl hole on exterior wall just below rim. Chipping and abrasions as shown, with surface chips reattached, and restoration and fill to fissure radiating from rim. Losses to interior surfaces and chipping to exterior. Stable fissures and striations. Great preservation to motifs and pigments.