Jalisco Redware Pottery Dog Effigy Vessel & Bowl

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Jalisco. A pair of burnished redware ceramics from the shaft-tomb cultures of West Mexico. The larger is an effigy vessel modeled as a plump, short-legged dog, its rounded body swelling into stout limbs while a spout rises from the back and the alert muzzle turns to one side, pierced eyes and pricked ears animating the face; remnants of black pigment mottle the warm slip. Such fattened-dog effigies, likely representations of the hairless xoloitzcuintli, carried funerary meaning as companions and guides for the deceased into the underworld. The smaller piece is a simple hemispherical bowl, its interior polished to a lustrous orange-red, the exterior banded with beige and orange stripes above the foot. Together they evoke the domestic and mortuary furnishings interred in the deep shaft tombs of the region. The dog held special resonance across West Mexico. In Colima and neighboring Jalisco, plump canine effigies are among the most beloved products of the shaft-tomb tradition (roughly 300 BCE to 300 CE), placed with the dead as sustenance and as spirit guides believed to escort the soul across the waters of the underworld. The breed most often depicted is the xoloitzcuintli, a hairless dog long valued as both companion and food source. The rounded, well-fed forms are not merely charming: fatness signaled abundance and readiness for the journey beyond. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 204123

估價:$350

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