Nariño or Carchi Pottery Sea Shell Ocarina

Carchi-Nariño  Complex, Highlands Ecuador to Colombia SA, Circa. 1250 AD.

Hand-modeled in a deep brown burnished clay imitating the conical spiral form of a marine conch shell, the body incised with a raised ridged whorl pattern at the pointed apex and a broad band of interlocking stepped-fret geometric ornament around the widest girth, the surface pierced with a series of small fingerholes and a larger blowhole set into the shoulder of the shell form. The reverse carries a suspension hole near the base of the spire, confirming the piece was worn or carried as a sounding pendant as well as played, and the burnishing retains a rich chocolate-brown patina with the incised lines picked out in a lighter red-buff slip for contrast. Condition is sound and stable, with the expected soft wear to the burnished surface and light abrasion to the ridged apex consistent with age and handling, no repairs or restoration apparent. 
Size 5-1/4 in. length (13.3 cm); 6-3/4 inches on its custom mount

Compare with the Nariño Ocarina in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (acc. 505632), a black-on-red shell-form aerophone of the same conical type, and with the corpus of Carchi-Nariño mollusk-shell aerophones studied at the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels; further parallels for this shell-effigy whistle type are illustrated in Amerindian Signs, 5000 Years of Pre-Columbian Art in Ecuador by Valdez. 
Ex Santa Fe, New Mexico collection