Cylinder Vase
Artist
Unknown
Datecirca 700–800
MediumCeramic with red, orange, and black on cream slip paint
Dimensionsheight, width, and depth: 7 1/4 × 4 3/4 × 4 3/4 in. (18.4 × 12.1 × 12.1 cm)
ClassificationsCeramics
Credit LineGift of Mr. John B. Fulling
Object numberG.76.2.1
On View
On viewBeautifully painted cylinder vases were used by the Maya ruling elite for drinking chocolate beverages. This vase is painted with an elaborately rendered hieroglyphic date in the Maya calendar, which is equivalent to December 5, 711. Part of the date glyph is represented by the profile head of the Young Corn God inside a daysign cartouche. The cartouche is flanked by two square signs that refer to the partition between natural and supernatural realms. Atop the glyph is the hunal, the headdress of kingship, with its white cloth tie-ends draped on either side of the cartouche. These are apt symbols for a chocolate beverage drinking vessel used during important sociopolitical meetings among the Maya ruling elite.
Although painting was one of the principal forms of artistic expression among the Maya, few of their frescoes and almost none of their illustrated books survive. Thus, vase painting is the best source of information about this virtually lost art. The best painted ceramics were prestige items used by the wealthy classes; they survive because they have been preserved in tombs. Made by the coil method (the Maya did not use the wheel), some of the finest pots include inscriptions suggesting that the painters who made them were members of the royal family, possibly sons who were not in the line of succession to the throne. As individuals schooled in hieroglyphic writing, all master pottery painters belonged to the elite class of Maya society.
Published References"Recent Acquisitions," (exhibition catalogue), North Carolina Museum of Art Bulletin 13, nos. 1 and 2 (1975), cat. no. 259, illus. (b-w).
Mary Ellen Soles, entry for Cylinder Vase, in North Carolina Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections, Rebecca Martin Nagy, ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1998), 44, illus. (color); detail (color) 40.
M. Therese Southgate, M.D., "The Cover," JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 290, no. 12 (September 24, 2003), discussed 1553, illus. (color) 1545, 1553, and cover.
Mary Ellen Soles, entry for Cylinder Vase, in North Carolina Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections, rev. ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 2010), 90, illus. (color) 91.
Exhibition HistoryRaleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Recent Acquisitions," November 23, 1975-February 1, 1976, cat. no. 259, illus. (b-w).
Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "The People's Collection, Reimagined," October 7, 2022–present. Object Rights Statement
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