An Olmec Buffware Bowl (Tecomate), ca. 1000 - 600 BCE

This finely made bowl features a full, round shape with a wide mouth. Made of a kaolin-like clay, its walls are thin and burnished to a high gloss. Although undecorated, the pleasing color variation on the outer surface ranges from beige to grey to light brown and orange-red.

These early Olmec bowls typically have a globular shape with a small opening at the top. A potter carefully built the thin-walled vessels using a coil technique with a kaolin-like clay, and finished them with a light-colored slip and burnished the surface, which displays small pitted losses. The vessel type is known as a tecomate (“gourd”), named after the gourds that inspired its original form. Some of the earliest ceramic vessels in Mesoamerica took the form of gourds captured in the more durable material of fired clay. Tecomates were important receptacles for community feasts, and many were subsequently placed in burials as important funerary offerings.

For a related example, see Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession number: 2014.244.3 (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/318472)

Further Reading: Benson, Elizabeth P., and Beatriz de la Fuente, eds. Olmec Art of Ancient Mexico. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1996. 

Medium: Ceramic

Dimensions: Height: 3 3/8 inches (8.5 cm), Width: 4 1/4 inches (10.8 cm)

Condition: Some expected minor surface pitting that does detract, the vesse is intact and in very good condition.  A lovely example.

Provenance: Collection of Samuel Dubiner, Tel Aviv, Israel, acquired in the 1960s, subsequently in the collection of Barry Kernerman, Toronto, Canada, thereafter in a private Florida collection.

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