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Source Description
The brown color and elongated, curvilinear form of this bowl recalls that of a gourd, the most common food-service vessel in Mesoamerica. To this day, gourds remain an important household item as well as the preferred container for ceremonial offerings, from those for curing the sick to Catholic rites of veneration. Throughout Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala today, guests are honored by being served a chocolate beverage in a gourd drinking cup, a practice reaching back at least to 1600 BCE. The bowl's graceful curvature is accentuated by the burnish lines that follow the vessel's contours. In place of the gourd's stem, the artist incised geometric motifs that have symbolic associations.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
80424
label
Bowl with Incised Motifs
core
obj
dtoType
object
citationUrl
pageCount
2
Source metadata
id
80424
contentType
object
stage
normalized
title
Bowl with Incised Motifs
description
The brown color and elongated, curvilinear form of this bowl recalls that of a gourd, the most common food-service vessel in Mesoamerica. To this day, gourds remain an important household item as well as the preferred container for ceremonial offerings, from those for curing the sick to Catholic rites of veneration. Throughout Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala today, guests are honored by being served a chocolate beverage in a gourd drinking cup, a practice reaching back at least to 1600 BCE. The bowl's graceful curvature is accentuated by the burnish lines that follow the vessel's contours. In place of the gourd's stem, the artist incised geometric motifs that have symbolic associations.
provenance
Stendahl Galleries, Los Angeles [date and mode of acquisition unknown] [1] ; John G. Bourne, 1970s, by purchase; by bequest to Walters Art Museum, 2017.[1] Said to have been found ""one inside the other"" with 2009.20.270
date
1200-600 BCE (Early-Middle Formative)
citationUrl
rightsUri
CC0
language
en
genreSpecific
Ceramics
bowls (vessels)
imageCount
2
pageCount
2
source
import
dimensions
units
cm
width
5.1
height
15.2
depth
6.9
dimensionsRaw
H: 2 x W: 6 x D: 2 11/16 in. (5.08 x 15.24 x 6.86 cm)
Source extras
cul
Olmec
med
earthenware
creator_ids
8579
collection_ids
AME
exhibition_ids
2988
Page inventory
seq
1
type
photo
mediaId
aefe717968be6cef
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no
seq
2
type
photo
mediaId
f8362169b65703c4
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no