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Lot 51
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Taino Carved Stone Zemi Effigy Head
Taino Carved Stone Zemi Effigy Head
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Pre-Columbian, Caribbean, Taino, ca. 1000–1500 CE. A commanding zemi effigy carved from a dense, mottled stone whose russet veining drifts across a pale greenish-grey matrix, lending the surface a living, sinewy quality. The sculptor has shaped an ovoid cranium of considerable presence, its dome smooth and swelling, framed below by a low ridged brow that arcs into the bridge of a narrow, attenuated nose. Vast circular eye sockets dominate the face, their deeply hollowed wells preserving a granular, unpolished interior that contrasts sharply with the burnished planes surrounding them. Twin pierced ears flank the temples, retaining small carved spool-like ornaments suggestive of the gold or shell earplugs worn by Taino caciques. The mouth is rendered as a horizontal bar incised with rows of bared teeth, an unsettling rictus that recalls the skeletal aspect favored in representations of opiyel and other ancestral spirits.\n\nWithin the cosmology of the Taino, who flourished across Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Lesser Antilles before the Contact period, the zemi served as both deity and conduit, an embodiment of supernatural force housed in stone, wood, cotton, or bone. Such carved heads were kept in caney temples, attended by behiques, and consulted through cohoba rituals in which hallucinogenic snuff opened dialogue between the living and the unseen. The skeletal countenance here, with its sunken eyes and exposed dentition, likely invokes an ancestor or death spirit, a guardian whose vigilance bridged the worlds of the quick and the deceased. Mounted on a custom display stand. Size: 7.5" W x 12.2" H (19.1 cm W x 31.0 cm H); on included custom stand: 15" H (38.1 cm H).

Provenance: ex-private collection, Fairhaven, Massachusetts, USA, collected from 2010 to 2015

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Item # 203225

  • Condition: Excellent. Small chip to upper left of verso and natural, stable surface fissures to stone. Ligh weathering and abrasion , but, otherwise, intact and excellent with an impressive preservation.

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by Artemis Fine Arts
June 25, 2026 9:00 AM MDT
686 S. Taylor Avenue
Suite 108
Louisville, CO, US 80027

Artemis Fine Arts

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Bid Increments
From: To: Increments:
$0 $299 $25
$300 $999 $50
$1,000 $1,999 $100
$2,000 $4,999 $250
$5,000 $9,999 $500
$10,000 $19,999 $1,000
$20,000 $49,999 $2,500
$50,000 $99,999 $5,000
$100,000 $199,999 $10,000
$200,000 + $20,000