Teotihuacan culture, Mexico
AD 300 to 700
Stone
Height 5" (12.7 cm); width 5 3/4" (14.6 cm)
Provenance: Constance McCormick Fearing, Santa Barbara, California, acquired in the 1950s; James Jeter, Santa Barbara, California
Teotihuacan stone masks follow a recognizable formal canon with a broad forehead, horizontal brow line, oval eyes, and a slightly parted mouth, functioning as a standardized symbolic type rather than individual portraiture. The city of Teotihuacan, located approximately 50 kilometers northeast of Mexico City, was the dominant urban center of Mesoamerica at its peak around AD 600, its artistic traditions influencing cultures across the region for centuries. Stone masks represent one of the most studied categories of Teotihuacan portable sculpture and are held in major museum collections worldwide.
Current scholarship indicates that Teotihuacan stone masks were not worn by living people but were instead attached to perishable sculptures of human or deity figures, or mounted within deity and mortuary bundles used in ritual and funerary contexts. The peripheral attachment holes present on many examples supported organic materials including feathers, fabric, and wooden armatures, traces of which have been identified microscopically in excavated examples. The facial features of this mask are carved with the restrained geometric precision characteristic of Teotihuacan lapidary production of the period.
The provenance connects this mask to Constance McCormick Fearing of the McCormick Harvester International family, who acquired it in the 1950s, a period of active collecting of Pre-Columbian material well before the 1972 UNESCO Convention. The subsequent holding by James Jeter of Santa Barbara, a known dealer and collector of Pre-Columbian and colonial material, provides a further documented point of ownership. The 1950s acquisition date establishes the mask's pre-Convention status within the legal framework governing the sale of Pre-Columbian objects.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
Teotihuacan culture, Mexico
AD 300 to 700
Stone
Height 5" (12.7 cm); width 5 3/4" (14.6 cm)
Provenance: Constance McCormick Fearing, Santa Barbara, California, acquired in the 1950s; James Jeter, Santa Barbara, California
Teotihuacan stone masks follow a recognizable formal canon with a broad forehead, horizontal brow line, oval eyes, and a slightly parted mouth, functioning as a standardized symbolic type rather than individual portraiture. The city of Teotihuacan, located approximately 50 kilometers northeast of Mexico City, was the dominant urban center of Mesoamerica at its peak around AD 600, its artistic traditions influencing cultures across the region for centuries. Stone masks represent one of the most studied categories of Teotihuacan portable sculpture and are held in major museum collections worldwide.
Current scholarship indicates that Teotihuacan stone masks were not worn by living people but were instead attached to perishable sculptures of human or deity figures, or mounted within deity and mortuary bundles used in ritual and funerary contexts. The peripheral attachment holes present on many examples supported organic materials including feathers, fabric, and wooden armatures, traces of which have been identified microscopically in excavated examples. The facial features of this mask are carved with the restrained geometric precision characteristic of Teotihuacan lapidary production of the period.
The provenance connects this mask to Constance McCormick Fearing of the McCormick Harvester International family, who acquired it in the 1950s, a period of active collecting of Pre-Columbian material well before the 1972 UNESCO Convention. The subsequent holding by James Jeter of Santa Barbara, a known dealer and collector of Pre-Columbian and colonial material, provides a further documented point of ownership. The 1950s acquisition date establishes the mask's pre-Convention status within the legal framework governing the sale of Pre-Columbian objects.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
