This wonderful and quite rare "donut" duck effigy measures 7 inches long, 6.25 inches tall and 6 inches wide at the breast. The "donut" descriptor comes from the interior hole which goes completely through the center of the effigy. The reason for this design element is unknown and subject to much discussion and conjecturer. It should be noted though that very similar designs are found in Mayan pieces excavated in the Mexico and Guatemala areas. The exterior exhibits a classic Chaco "pennant" design and extremely fine line-work; the entire piece is in "as found" condition and has no breakage, restoration or addition of any paint. Such examples are quite rare and generally found only in the most advanced collections.

This mint Reserve Parrot was excavated on the Tommy Cox ranch in New Mexico in the summer of 1998 along with an animal quadruped which is also listed on this site. The bird measures 6.4 inches long by 7.25 inches tall and 6 inches wide at the breast. This piece was made to function as a canteen as evidenced by the loop near the tail and the loop at the back of the head. The beak of the bird is curled just as would be with a parrot. The piece is excellently potted and the painted design is bold and well done. The eyes protrude and are surrounded with mask-like elements. There is a chip at the top right of the opening which is the only thing keeping this piece from being mint. There is no restoration or addition of paint of any kind.

This wonderful and rare effigy was excavated on the Tommy Cox ranch in New Mexico in the summer of 1998. It measures 7.25 inches long, 7.5 inches tall and 4.75" wide at the breast. The piece was made to be a canteen as evidenced by the two loops; one loop is at the tail and the other at the back of the neck. The top of the spout shows significant wear from what was most likely the stopper which held the water in. The eyes are each protruding and emphasized by a black mask-like design. It should be specifically noted that this piece has absolutely no restoration of any kind which means that all four of the legs are original and unbroken.

The sides exhibit a classic Reserve lightening design with the back a plain white. Of specific note is the symbol on the breast which is that of an upside down, headless, human. The significance of this symbol is not fully understood.

This incredible bowl C. 1100AD measures 6.4" in diameter is without question one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Mesa Verde ceramic bowl extant.

In order to fully understand the magnitude of this bowl one has to understand that the Mesa Verde culture virtually never included images of animals on their ceramics. If they did it was generally one image, sometimes indistinct, and was not the predominate feature of the piece. Two quote one dealer who has been in the business for over 30 years and has seen tens of thousands of pieces "Mesa Verde never put animals on their pottery. This bowl had to have been made for a very special reason - things had to have been bad with the hunts and they probably created this to enrich the hunts. I have never seen anything like it."

The bowl has a horn toad image in the bottom and around the inside images of 27, yes, 27 deer. If that was not enough there are additional 13 deer images on the exterior for a total of 40 deer!

When we purchased this bowl there was a crack that had been filled with Elmer’s glue. We have had a professional conservator remove the glue and the crack has been naturally closed and properly glued. The crack was further cleaned with hydrogen peroxide to help deemphasize the darker carbon core in the crack. A light trace of wood ash was also worked into the crack to soften its appearance. This can be removed with acetone in under five minutes if the new owner wishes.

With respect to condition, the bowl is intact without the addition of plaster or paint. The bowl was once in the collection of Ed Harris who is recognized as the greatest collector of prehistoric Native American ceramics.

This wonderful Showlow Polychrome bowl C. 1325 - 1375AD measures 9.5 inches in diameter and 4.5" deep, is glued from about 12 pieces. The pieces were basically fresh breaks which went together very tightly making the cracks difficult to see. The white is brilliant and the black is bold and some places well glazed.

The Showlow Polychrome type is defined with a normal "Four Mile like" exterior and the interior is executed with only black and white. White paint on the Arizona Polychromes is almost always exfoliated due to moisture in the ground and therefore most examples known have the paint enhanced in a restoration process. The black design on the interior is exceptionally well done and too is out of the ordinary. Examples which have retained all of the original white on the interior and exterior, like this bowl, are extremely rare and highly sought after by the advanced collectors.

Offered is a beautiful Showlow olla measuring 7.2" wide and 5" tall. The is one piece broken out of the rim which has been reattached. It is so well done that it was represented as mint and I believed it to be mint when I purchased it. The orange-red slip is accented with a bold glazed black paint with bright white lines which defines the type.

This is an absolutely amazing, single piece, specimen (90 inches x 64 inches) of the now rare Arizona Rainbow Petrified wood which is itself 218 million years old! This specific piece was cut from a 21 ton piece that was discovered in about 1993 on the Paul Sells ranch which borders the Petrified Forest National Park to the east in northern Arizona. The piece was from the lower portion of the tree which included that portion which flared out as part of the stump. This particular piece was obtained as a horizontal slice through that base with a, yes, 150 inch diameter diamond saw. It was subsequently stabilized and then hand polished over many, many months.

Why is this so rare?

Petrified wood in general is not a rare substance as it is literally found all over the world. What is not common is the survival of very large pieces and the occurrence of the proper environment to create bright vibrant colors. There are three major reasons very large (in excess of three feet wide or four feet long) specimens are so rare; two are natural and one is political. First very specific conditions have to occur in order to create any petrified wood. These involve volcanic activity, a wet marshy environment and the presence in the soil and volcanic ash of very specific minerals which will become the source of the colors. Virtually all large petrified wood occurs in dull colors such as browns, blacks, white or combinations of those because the proper minerals were not present to impart the colors. Then it takes a hundred million years or so for the wood, mud and minerals to "cook." In other places, such as Russia where the minerals were present the actual trees which became petrified were relatively small so no very large pieces. Secondly, because the process is created by volcanic activity there are and continues to be earthquakes. Those earthquakes, and the uplift of the Colorado Plateau sixty million years ago, caused the brittle quartz rock-like logs to break up into relatively small pieces, a surviving four foot long piece now becoming a big piece.

There are though two specific locations that did have the necessary combination of size and minerals - Argentina and Arizona. With respect to Argentina - if one wants to get some big brightly colored pieces one will have to move there because Argentina considers all of that material to be a National Treasure and therefore it cannot be exported. Game over! That leaves Arizona which had enormous examples of a now extent type of pine tree known as Araucarioxylon arizonicum from the Late Triassic (200 to 250 million years ago) paleo-ecosystem. Some of these trees exceeded 100 feet in height and 10 feet in diameter. As many people know the land now designated as the Petrified Forest National Park was set aside by President Teddy Roosevelt on December 8, 1906 as a National Monument and made a National Park on August 25, 1916. The boundaries of the park were selected based on where there were large specimens and logs exposed on the surface. This resulted in a strange very long (about 50 miles north/south) and very narrow (about 10 miles east/west) park. What in fact was present was a large gentle sloping dome with only the top (the park) portion eroded enough to expose the logs - in fact the major deposits of petrified wood were just below the surface and to the east of the designated park. That area has been private property known as the Paul Sells ranch.

Which brings us to the political reason of the rarity of the large specimens. The large logs which were commercially available, one of which this table was made from, had to come from private property therefore the Sells ranch. On December 3rd 2004 President George W. Bush signed a bill that authorized expanded boundaries for the Petrified Forest National Park, more than doubling the size of the park, from 93,533 acres to 218,533 acres. With that legislation a moratorium went into effect prohibiting the removal of any more petrified wood from the lands to be added to the park - in an instant the known supply was totally gone (Game almost over).

The table, mounted on a base of bristlecone pine, offered here is already rare and in the next few years will significantly escalate in value as the lack of supply is realized and the demand increases because of its rarity. The table can be used as a dining table or an office conference table that really makes a statement. This is a rare opportunity to purchase what will become an amazing family heirloom to be passed down from generation to generation. It is assured that there will not be another one like this next door, across town or most anywhere else.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS SPECIMEN CAN BE HUNG ON A WALL AS A TREMENDOUS PIECE OF ART. OBVIOUSLY IT TAKES SPECIAL PREPARATION TO ASSURE SUCCESS AND WOULD BE DONE ON A COST BASIS.

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS ARE AVAILABLE.

Homolovi pottery comes from only two sites near Winslow Arizona and is one of the important types that bridged the gap from Anasazi to Hopi pottery. The area was popular for cotton farming, as evidenced by the weaving looms, spindle whorls and massive amounts of cottonseed that have been found at the ruins. The nearby Little Colorado River provided water for the inhabitants, the cotton and their other crops. The site was along the prehistoric Palatkwapi Trail, which ran from Montezuma Castle to the Hopi mesas. Trading of cotton, pottery and parrots was common between the many prehistoric sites in northern Arizona. At the peak, it is estimated, 5,000 people lived at Homolovi. Homolovi II, the largest of the four pueblos, it had three plazas and stone walls rising two to three stories, and housed several thousand people. In the 1400s, the area was abandoned, just as were many other Southwest ruins.

This wonderful bowl is in perfect condition measuring 8 5/8 inches by 3 inches while exhibiting a classic Homolovi design in black on a deep orange-red clay body. Pieces from the Homolovi tradition are very scarce and down-right rare when in perfect mint condition.

Homolovi pottery comes from only two sites near Winslow Arizona and is one of the important types that bridged the gap from Anasazi to Hopi pottery. The area was popular for cotton farming, as evidenced by the weaving looms, spindle whorls and massive amounts of cottonseed that have been found at the ruins. The nearby Little Colorado River provided water for the inhabitants, the cotton and their other crops. The site was along the prehistoric Palatkwapi Trail, which ran from Montezuma Castle to the Hopi mesas. Trading of cotton, pottery and parrots was common between the many prehistoric sites in northern Arizona. At the peak, it is estimated, 5,000 people lived at Homolovi. Homolovi II, the largest of the four pueblos, it had three plazas and stone walls rising two to three stories, and housed several thousand people. In the 1400s, the area was abandoned, just as were many other Southwest ruins.

We recently acquired acquired this beautiful and important bowl in a small estate auction back east. It must have been an item that someone had acquired on a trip out west. The bowl is in absolute pristine condition with not a single flaw; it measures 11.25 inches wide and 4.75 inches deep.