Chimú-Inca Polychrome Stirrup-Spout Vessel in the Form of a Recumbent Dog

North Coast of Peru, Late Horizon, ca. AD 1470–1532, hand-modeled and mold-assisted in a fine oxidized red-orange earthenware and finished with a warm terracotta slip enlivened by creamy kaolin-white panels and manganese-black resist highlights — the tri-color scheme that distinguishes vessels made on the North Coast after the Inca conquest of the Chimú kingdom from the earlier monochrome Chimú blackware tradition. The body is worked into a small recumbent canine with legs tucked beneath, forepaws and hind paws modeled in cream against the orange ground, a rounded muzzle showing an incised toothy grin, prominent applied circular eyes surrounded by black resist masks, alert tab ears painted black, and a small modeled tail turned back along the flank; a single robust arched stirrup handle rises from the shoulders and terminates in a straight tapering cylindrical spout, the diagnostic Chimú-Inca vessel form that fuses the North Coast stirrup-spout tradition with the taller cylindrical spout profile favored under Inca administration. Vessels of this kind functioned as fine funerary and ritual serving bottles for chicha or water and were placed in tombs as offerings signaling elite status and the assimilated Chimú-Inca style circulating between Chan Chan and the imperial center at Cuzco; the dog itself is the native Andean short-haired companion, honored in coastal iconography as guide, hunting partner, and afterlife escort. Condition is very good with expected mineral encrustation and light burial deposits, minor abrasion to the cream slip on the paws and muzzle, small stable chips at the spout rim, and no visible restoration under normal light. Measuring 7 in. long x 6½ in. high (17.8 cm x 16.5 cm), the bottle compares closely to Chimú-Inca canine and animal stirrup-spout vessels in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (cf. 1978.412.196), to the Museo Larco holdings of Chimú-Inca polychrome bottles in Lima, and to related examples in the American Museum of Natural History and the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin.
Ex Private Doral FL Collector, A.S.