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Lot 113
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Mississippian Pottery Effigy Pipes & Stone Discoidal, ex-Warhol Collection
Mississippian Pottery Effigy Pipes & Stone Discoidal, ex-Warhol Collection
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Native American, Mississippian culture, ca. 800–1500 CE. A compelling assemblage of nine artifacts drawn from the great mound-building civilizations that flourished across the river valleys of the American Southeast and Midwest. The group comprises eight pottery pipes and a single ground-stone discoidal, each bearing the muted patina and earth-toned surfaces characteristic of objects long interred or handled across generations.

Among the pipes, one takes a simple unembellished form, its bowl and stem marked only by the modeler's hand. Four are figural human effigies, ranging from a small bust with crisply delineated features to economical heads emerging from the pipe body in the abstracted manner favored by Mississippian potters. A fifth effigy renders a canine, perhaps a dog or wolf, with attentive muzzle and alert posture, while another assumes the form of a bear, compact and powerful. The most lyrical of the group depicts a swan or other long-necked bird, its sinuous neck arching gracefully above the bowl in a passage of remarkable sculptural confidence. Such effigy pipes served as conduits for tobacco and other sacred botanicals consumed in ritual smoking, the rising smoke understood as a means of communion with the spirit world and a vehicle for prayer.

The accompanying discoidal, ground and polished from dense stone and pierced through its center, belongs to the celebrated tradition of chunkey stones. These disks were rolled across prepared playing fields in the chunkey game, a contest of skill and chance played throughout the Mississippian world and recorded by early European observers. Beyond sport, chunkey carried deep ceremonial weight, binding communities together and serving as a stage for wagering, diplomacy, and ritualized rivalry between towns.

That this group once passed through the hands of Andy Warhol lends it a particular resonance. Warhol was among the twentieth century's most voracious and idiosyncratic collectors, his Manhattan townhouse packed floor to ceiling with cookie jars, Art Deco furniture, folk carvings, and a remarkable holding of Native American art that drew the attention of curators and dealers alike. His magpie eye treated the work of anonymous ancient makers with the same seriousness he applied to Pop iconography, and the 1988 Sotheby's dispersal of his collection became a watershed moment in the market for American Indian art. To hold a Mississippian pipe once shelved among Warhol's possessions is to encounter two distinct American imaginations in a single object: the ancient ceremonial life of the Eastern Woodlands and the restless connoisseurship of an artist who taught a generation how to look again at things previously dismissed. Size of largest (pipe with reclining figure): 6.5" W x 3.5" H x 1.8" D (16.5 cm W x 8.9 cm H x 4.6 cm D).

Provenance: private Colorado, USA Collection; ex-private Denver, Colorado, USA collection; ex-private Flushing, New York and Ridgeway, Colorado, USA collection; ex-Sotheby's New York, April 24-26, 1988, "The Andy Warhol Collection: American Indian Art," lot 1620 (9 of 57); ex-Andy Warhol Collection

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Item # 203056

  • Condition: Good. Most petite / most simple pipe is a fragment of a larger piece. Pipe with reclining figure on stem has been repaired with break line visible. Bird pipe has had beak repaired or restored. Discoidal is heavily weathered. Expected age wear with nicks, chips, and stable hairline fissures in areas. Otherwise, good presentation with nice remaining forms and detail. Scattered earthen deposits throughout.

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by Artemis Fine Arts
June 25, 2026 9:00 AM MDT
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