Museum display label:

“The Mixtecs adapted their pictographic style - developed in the codices-to ceramics. Their pottery is distinguished by its luminous, dense polychrome surfaces, the result of painstaking burnishing with an agate or bone tool. This urn is painted with four circular red panels with feather and jaguar paw decorations in a black underworld setting dominated by death heads, shells and underwater organisms. The upper bands depict celestial motifs.”

Medium: earthenware, pigments

Measurements: 38.7 × 42.0 cm diameter

Provenance: “Presented anonymously, 1980”

(That means it was probably looted and sold on the black market, just in case it sounds very lovely).

Item collection link: National Gallery of Victoria (Australia) - PC186-1980