The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 26, 2024

Bowl with Geometric Design, Warped (Three-part Design)

Bowl with Geometric Design, Warped (Three-part Design)

1000–1130
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

Mimbres painters achieved controlled lines with brushes made of the chewed ends of yucca leaves.

Description

The Mogollon of New Mexico’s Mimbres region created thousands of hemispheric bowls painted with black-and-white designs on their interiors. The designs range from elegant geometric motifs to abstract humans and animals. Meaning may have dwelled in part in the domed shape of the bowls, which often were ritually punctured before they were placed over the heads of the deceased in graves. (This example comes from a non-funerary context.) Perhaps, like the modern Pueblo peoples who descend from them, the Mimbres believed that the sky is a dome pierced to allow passage between worlds, such as between the realms of the living and the dead.
  • Like many objects found in archaeological contexts, this bowl is in a number of fragments. An earlier undated restoration assembled the fragments and filled in missing areas with plaster. The plaster fills were fully painted to integrate with the existing design of the bowl on both the interior and exterior. These earlier restorations were skillfully done, but the paint discolored over time. In many areas the restoration paint also covered over areas of original ceramic fragments with intact decorated surfaces. In 2022, the later paint layers were largely removed and the existing plaster fills were resurfaced and repainted to better integrate them with the surrounding design.
  • 1920s
    Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, NM, 1930, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art
    1930–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art
  • Bradfield, Wesley. Cameron Creek Village, A Site in the Mimbres Area in Grant County, New Mexico. [Santa Fe, N.M.]: [The School of American Research], 1931. plate LXXXI, figure 133-28, caption p. 109
    "Some Examples of Mimbres Valley Pottery." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 17, no. 4, part 1 (April, 1930): 75-77 Mentioned: p. 77; Reproduced: p. 83 www.jstor.org
  • The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA), Cleveland, OH (June 9-August 20, 2006).
    MOCA Cleveland (6/9/2006 - 8/20/2006): "The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art", no. 16, p. 116.
  • {{cite web|title=Bowl with Geometric Design, Warped (Three-part Design)|url=false|author=|year=1000–1130|access-date=26 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1930.36