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Lot 28A
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Cholula Polychrome Pedestal Bowl, Mixteca-Puebla Elite Ware
Cholula Polychrome Pedestal Bowl, Mixteca-Puebla Elite Ware
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Ca. 1000 - 1050 CE. Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Mixteca-Puebla style, Cholula. A polychrome pedestal bowl of the Mixteca-Puebla style, almost certainly from the workshops of Cholula, that great pilgrimage city and ceramic center of ancient Mexico whose potters supplied elite households across Mesoamerica with vessels of exceptional refinement. The deep, straight-sided bowl rises from a broad flared foot, the warm orange slip ground animated across the exterior by bold registers of painting: a running checkerboard band of dark brown squares traverses the upper body, its crisp geometry suggesting the textile patterns that permeated elite material culture throughout the region, while large paired volutes or scroll forms occupy the lower body at the junction with the foot, their confident brushwork conveying both cosmological resonance and decorative authority.

The foot itself is encircled by vertical linear divisions evoking architectural or woven patterning, the whole exterior composition a layered visual argument for the ordered world its makers inhabited. The interior is finished in a deep burnished red slip, unmarked and richly lustrous. Vessels of this form served the Mesoamerican nobility as goblets for chocolate or pulque, the fermented maguey sap that lubricated ritual and social life alike, and their presence in a feast or ceremony announced the status of the host as surely as any other marker of rank.

Provenance: Private collection of S. Saunders, Nogales, Arizona, USA collection

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Item # 201736

  • Condition: Good. Good condition. Some chips to rim and foot with a couple stable hairline fissures in areas. Nicks and abrasions to surface as shown, all commensurate with age. Otherwise, intact and very nice with good pigments and decorative program.

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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