Lot 116

Mississippian & Fort Ancient Stone Effigy Pipes - Weeping Eye Motif

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Lot 116
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Mississippian & Fort Ancient Stone Effigy Pipes - Weeping Eye Motif
Mississippian & Fort Ancient Stone Effigy Pipes - Weeping Eye Motif
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Mississippian & Fort Ancient Stone Effigy Pipes - Weeping Eye Motif

Estimate: $700 - $1,000

Starting Bid: $350

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

Native American, Mississippian and Fort Ancient cultures, ca. 1000–1650 CE. A trio of carved stone effigy pipes from the late prehistoric and protohistoric Eastern Woodlands, each rendering a human visage with the spare, arresting economy that defines Mississippian and Fort Ancient sculptural traditions. The largest, attributed to the Mississippian culture, presents a rounded head with deeply incised features and the unmistakable "weeping eye" motif, a teardrop or forked line descending from the eye that scholars associate with the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. The motif has been linked variously to the falcon or peregrine impersonator, to rain and fertility iconography, and to warrior cosmology, its precise meaning still debated but its ritual gravity beyond doubt.

The two smaller pipes, attributed to the Fort Ancient culture of the middle Ohio Valley, take the elbow form favored by that tradition: a vertical bowl rising from a horizontal stem socket, the exterior modeled with a schematic face. Brows, eyes, nose, and mouth are pared into the stone with the directness of folk portraiture, the proportions compressed to fit the working geometry of the pipe. Fort Ancient pipe makers worked locally available stone with abrasive and incising tools, producing objects meant for the hand and the mouth, smoke from native tobacco curling past the carved features in moments of council, diplomacy, or private petition.

Together the three pieces compress several centuries of Eastern Woodlands smoking practice into a single tableau, the Mississippian piece speaking to the elaborate iconographic system of the great mound centers, the Fort Ancient pair to the more intimate village-scale ritual life that persisted along the Ohio and its tributaries into the contact era. Size of largest (Mississippian): 2.1" W x 3" H x 1.9" D (5.3 cm W x 7.6 cm H x 4.8 cm D).

Provenance: private Colorado, USA Collection; ex-private Denver, Colorado, USA collection; ex-private Boulder, Colorado, USA collection, ex-private Flushing, New York and Ridgeway, Colorado, USA collection; largest was acquired November 2018 via Thomaston Place Auction Galleries, Thomaston, Maine, USA; ex-Ray Jackson collection, Glasgow, Ohio, USA

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Item # 202893

  • Condition: Good. All have nicks, pitting, and abrasions commensurate with age. Otherwise, good remaining detail with old collection labels.

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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