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Lot 42A
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Four Pre-Columbian Pottery Figures - Jalisco, Costa Rican & Bahia Figures
Four Pre-Columbian Pottery Figures - Jalisco, Costa Rican & Bahia Figures
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Pre-Columbian, Mexico and Costa Rica, Jalisco, Bahia and Costa Rican cultures, ca. 300 BCE – 500 CE. A quartet of earthenware works drawn from across the ancient Americas, each modeled and slip-painted in the warm ochres and creams of fired clay. A robust standing female stretches her arms wide, her cream torso scored with red and grey body-paint, in the full-bodied Jalisco idiom of western Mexico. Beside her crouches a small white zoomorph, perhaps a dog or feline, rendered with spare economy. A footed pedestal bowl flares like an open blossom, its interior cradling a modeled bird whose wings rise from the basin, a vessel from the potters of ancient Costa Rica. Completing the assembly stands an androgynous figure with a broad cruciform head and slab-like body, attributed to the Bahia or Esteros tradition. Together they speak to domestic, funerary, and ceremonial life across distant cultures unified by clay. Size of tallest (standing female): 3.5" W x 4.5" H (8.9 cm W x 11.4 cm H).

The exuberant solid and hollow ceramic figures of Jalisco belong to the shaft-tomb tradition of western Mexico (roughly 300 BCE to 300 CE), interred with the dead and prized today for their candid vitality. The standing female, with arms outflung and torso decorated in resist and direct painting, exemplifies the type. Costa Rican pedestal vessels surmounted by avian or animal effigies served ceremonial and mortuary functions in the Greater Nicoya and Atlantic Watershed zones. The flat, slab-bodied figure with its distinctive cruciform or "T" shaped head reflects the Esteros/Bahia conventions of coastal Ecuador, where geometric abstraction of the human form prevailed.

Provenance: private Colorado, USA collection

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Item # 202803

  • Condition: Good. Esteros/Bahia figure has had legs professionally repaired. Standing female has been professionally repaired and restored. Seated zoomorph has had repairs to snout with chipping along visible break lines. Bowl is intact. All have expected surface wear with some nicks and chips. Otherwise, all present nicely with good remaining pigments and scattered earthen deposits.

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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
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$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