Chupícuaro Red and Tan Mammiform Tripod Bowl

West Mexico, Late Formative Period, ca. 300 BCE–300 CE

A hand-built in buff earthenware and finished with a lustrous burnished red slip over the exterior and rim, the shallow, gently flaring bowl raised on three globular, mammiform legs; a support form named for its breast-like swell and distinctive to the ceramic tradition of Chupícuaro in the Lerma River basin.

The interior floor bears a finely combed and incised concentric pattern beneath a lighter tan ground, contrasting with the deep oxidized red of the walls and legs, while remnants of firing clouds and smoke-blackening lend the surface its characteristic mottled warmth.

Size 10-1/4 in. (26.0 cm) diameter x 3-7/8 in. (9.8 cm) height,

Functionally, this is a serving or ceremonial food/offering bowl rather than a purely decorative object. The mammiform tripod form in Chupícuaro ceramics is consistently interpreted by archaeologists as a household and mortuary vessel type used for presenting food or liquid offerings.

Closely comparable mammiform tripod vessels from Chupícuaro are held in the Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession nos. 1979.206.352 and 1999.47.123), as well as among the Natalie Wood gift of Chupícuaro ceramics at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, underscoring the form's recognized place in the West Mexican ceramic canon. 

Provenance: Estate of Mario Villa, New Orleans, Louisiana.