Bowl with Rattle Base
Unknown Artist
c. 900–1519
Medium
earthenware with colored slips
Dimensions
h. 8 cm · diameter: 7.9 × 11 cm
Classification
Ceramic
Department
Art of the Americas
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Bequest of Jane Taft Ingalls
Accession Number
1962.249
About this artwork
The nobility may have used these goblets for a chocolate beverage or for pulque, made from the fermented sap of the maguey cactus. Both are painted with the precision and brilliant colors for which the Mixteca-Puebla style is renowned, and they carry some of the same motifs, such as the band of stylized animal heads at the top. The smaller bowl has a rattle base.