
+BOTTLE WITH FISH, Chorrera culture (1300 - 300 BC), Ecuador, pre-Columbian pottery.
Bottle made of ceramic covered with reddish-brown glaze. Decorated on the side with two full-plastic representations of fish, with faithfully rendered details of scales and tail. At the top, a double spout with a handle.
Ecuador, Chorrera culture (1300 - 300 BC).
Description
Length 15.7 cm, height 13.5 cm, width 15 cm.
Condition as seen in the photos, cracks, chip on the screed.
The vessel comes from the large collection of a Polish engineer who worked on road construction in Ecuador in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Chorrera culture (ca. 1300 - 300 BC) was another culture after the Valdivia and Machalilla cultures in which artists made ceramic vessels. However, it was only the artists of the Chorrera culture who developed so many types of vessels and various representations of people and animals. Ceramics could have practical applications, e.g. bottles used to store drinks, but very often they had religious or ritual significance. Figurines or bottles with additional small holes also served as musical instruments: they could make a sound like a whistle, and two-chamber vessels also made a sound when pouring liquids between chambers. The representations of animals and people by Chorrera artists are quite naturalistic, but with a greater or lesser degree of stylization. In today's Ecuador, after the Chorrera civilization, there was a period of regional development, where several civilizations developed, including La Tolita -Tumaco, Jama Coaque, Bahía and Guangala. The ceramics of each of these cultures developed many distinctive features, often departing from the "classical" and naturalistic pottery of the Chorrera culture.