The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 28, 2024

Bowl with Geometric Design (Two-part Feather)

Bowl with Geometric Design (Two-part Feather)

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.
  • 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 LXIV, figure 237, caption p. 86
    "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
  • {{cite web|title=Bowl with Geometric Design (Two-part Feather)|url=false|author=|year=1000–1130|access-date=28 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1930.42