Description
The brown color and elongated, curvilinear form of this bowl recalls that of a gourd, the most common food-service vessel in Mesoamerica. To this day, gourds remain an important household item as well as the preferred container for ceremonial offerings, from those for curing the sick to Catholic rites of veneration. Throughout Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala today, guests are honored by being served a chocolate beverage in a gourd drinking cup, a practice reaching back at least to 1600 BCE. The bowl's graceful curvature is accentuated by the burnish lines that follow the vessel's contours. In place of the gourd's stem, the artist incised geometric motifs that have symbolic associations.
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