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.

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.

The bowl offered here (11.25" x 6.2") is pictured and described in Barbara Moulard’s epic book “Within the Underworld Sky”, Twelvetrees Press, 1981, Plate 98, p. 150 and I quote “The large rounded Gila Polychrome, with its low shoulder and flair rim, is a classic form of Salado ceramics. The exterior is covered in red paint and the interior slipped in white. Although the Gila painting style has little in common with the Mimbres Black-on-white tradition, being more akin to pre-Hopi, Anasazi pottery painting, the shape of the vessel and the design layout have a precedent in Mimbres flare-rim painted vessels.

The structural areas of the bowl’s interior have separate decorative elements: a negative diamond band circles the rim and a broad broken “life line” band inscribes the complex interior composition in the center of the bowl. The composition is divided by opposing chevrons and filled with a sampler of Salado rectilinear patterning. The central focus of the painting is the pair of solid black, opposing parrot motifs which are pendant to the chevrons. They form an hourglass configuration in the center of the bowl. The parrot may have been a symbol which was associated with sun cults. The hourglass motif, as well as the cross, may have had similar connotations, with the cross representing the annual path of the sun. Both the parrot and the sun may have also been sky and underworld symbols. Like many other prehistoric Southwest decorated ceramics, this bowl probably functioned on both a utilitarian and sacred level.”