JAGUAR VESSEL

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) has a variety of Pre-Colombian art-historical objects but somewhat lacks with its Costa Rican art collection. Please keep in mind I wrote this essay in 2014 — so it might not be the case still! I haven’t had a chance to check out the museum and the new building since I left Houston. I laugh at myself now though, that was such a bold thing to say as a college student. Pretending to be an art critic….

Jaguar Vessel

ARTIST Unknown Central and South American

CULTURE / NATIONALITY Greater Nicoya, Pataky style

DATE 1000–1550 AD

PROBABLE PLACE Costa Rica

PROBABLE PLACE Nicaragua

MEDIUM Earthenware with slip

DIMENSIONS Overall: 12 3/4 × 11 3/4 × 11 3/4 in. (32.4 × 29.9 × 29.9 cm)

CREDIT LINE Museum purchase funded by Robert C. McNair, John S. Arnoldy, John S. Bace, Dunbar N. Chambers, Jr., Fred Levine, R. Cary McNair, Charles L. Sowell, and Bruce W. Wilkinson at "One Great Night in November 1991"

OBJECT NUMBER 91.1550

CURRENT LOCATION The Caroline Wiess Law Building 205M Wiess Gallery

In the Museum’s display windows, there is an assortment of vessels, bowls, and what appear to be kitchen supplies that carry visual significance with their distinctive design and context. They catch my attention. One of the vessels in the display case is the ceramic Jaguar Vessel. For this essay, I’m examining the Jaguar Vessel to determine if it was used for ritualistic purposes, its daily functionality, and its symbolic importance in Costa Rican culture and civilization. I think it would be interesting to compare it with the evidence documented in the Detroit Institute of Arts’ exhibition Between Continents/Between Seas and the symbol of the jaguar in general. 

The Jaguar Vessel from 1000-1500 at the MFAH is modeled as a smooth pear-shaped tripod vessel with features of a jaguar. The vessel stands at around one foot high and it is handheld. The jaguar’s body is balanced with two strong legs and a tail as a post. It makes the tripod form. The arms of the jaguar function as the handles of the vessel. The handles are resting at the top of the legs. From the front center view, the jaguar’s lunging head is protruding from the vessel. Its face has bulging eyes and its mouth open as if it were growling. There are two fanged teeth and a red tongue sticking out from the bloodthirsty face. Although having the features of an animal, the maker of this used a selection of figurative decorations in certain specific areas of the vessel.

The vessel is bold with patterning on the shoulders, legs, tail, neck, and top part (above the head). The decorations detail to be rosettes and a mixture of geometric patterns. The colors used for the legs are brown-black with off-white rosettes. The rosettes have an orange spot on them. The arms have an off-white base with a combination of brown linear and zigzag lines. The neck has a brown-black background with a variety of rosettes with swirling lines. The top part above the head of the jaguar is three inches wide with an assortment of rosettes, lines, and patterns. The limbs are detailed uniquely with an orange band shaping the paws of the jaguar. Each section of the patterning is outlined in a thin brown-black line. This animal was modeled as onto the object and is supposed to be feared with its intricate pattern and growling face. 

Installation view of Between Continents/Between Seas: Pre-Columbian Art of Costa Rica, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gallery Archives

Much of the publications written about the Greater Nicoya region are catalogs from various institutions that produced exhibitions presenting various objects created in the time periods I-VI.  In the 1981 comprehensive Costa Rican art exhibition Between Continents/Between Seas organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts, curators, professors, and contributors from all over the world provided essays in which they outline the origins of the art and materials created in Greater Nicoya, offering lots of insight on the people of Costa Rica: agriculture, archaeology, culture, and of course … materials. It was the first of its kind and documented the history of the country post-independence. The Periods go through archaeological phases based on the passing of time in the country’s different regions. 

The publications written about the Greater Nicoya (Costa Rica) culture are limited due to the “cultural backwater between the pinnacles of Mesoamerica and the Central Andes” (Snarskis 1981, 9). Much of the information about MFAH’s Jaguar Vessel can be ~ assumed ~/ similarly compared to Mesoamerica and the Central Andes. I feel like I learned this in a lecture. In order to create a full comprehensive outlook on Jaguar Vessel, one must take the time to evaluate not only the object but also the representations and symbolism on the vessel entirely. These are some proposed ideas regarding the creation process of the Museum’s glorious Jaguar Vessel — my immediate guess is that it was possibly used for ritualistic purposes, utility, or both? 

In his 1994 article “Predators of Culture: Jaguar Symbolism and Mesoamerican Elites” Nicholas J. Saunders elaborates on the importance of America’s largest feline, the jaguar, and what it means in Mesoamerican societies and culture — whether it be through worship and praise (of its strength) or for purely celebrating its “natural, stylized or anthropomorphic” form through art (Saunders 1994, 104). It is understood that the symbol of the jaguar represents “social status, warfare, and the wielding of spiritual and political power by shamans and chiefs in the region” (Saunders 1994, 107). The Jaguar Vessel is a very powerful figure in the shape of a vessel. 

In 1998 Richard Lesure discusses in his article “Vessel Form and Function in an Early Formative Ceramic Assemblage from Coastal Mexico” the importance of the ceramic in vessel forms in Coastal Mexico. What can be understood from this article is that there were different sizes, designs, and shapes of vessels used for different reasons. The various uses of a vessel are “cooking, food preparation, food serving, dry food storage, liquid storage, liquid transport, and liquid serving” which typically involve “social activities and interactions involved in the preparation and eating of food” (Lesure 1998, 19). There are various design expectations when working with vessels in which artisans consider the “orifice size, the shape of the base, the volume of pot, surface treatment” (Lesure 1998, 20). 

Photo credit: Research Gate

As I previously mentioned above, the history of Costa Rica has been considered behind that of Mesoamerica and the Central Andes (Snarskis 1981, 9). In spite of being a small country, Pre-Columbian Costa Rica was divided up into three general zones whose cultures produced distinctly different styles. In the Northwest Pacific corner lies, the Guanacaste Nicoya region. Its found objects are organized chronologically by period. The Jaguar Vessel was discovered here. The vessel can be identified as a product of one of the famous varieties of Papagayo Polychrome period whose characteristics and "motifs range from simple bands to complex figural scenes, including human, jaguar or serpent features" (Snarskis 1981, 35). The ceramic forms of the period are varieties of "bowls, jars, zoomorphic effigies, and effigy-head tripods" (Snarskis 1981, 35).  These structures and trends first appeared in mid-period V and are continued throughout Period VI. Other ceramic styles of Period VI consist of zoomorphic effigy representations in bowls and dishes instead of the tripod containers. 

During this transition period between Period V and Period VI, the interest in decorating stylized jaguars into vessels was still prominent. From the Museum’s dating of the Jaguar Vessel, it can be assumed that the vessel is a product created by Greater Nicoya artisans who lived in this “in-between” stage of Period V and Period VI. Also, due to historical evidence found that it was produced in Period VI but contained more of Period V’s characteristics. The Jaguar Vessel is a piece that has been replicated many times because it was a popular molding and function, making it a commercialized object in Greater Nicoya culture. As stated in the Lesure article the vessel’s function primarily involved itself with cooking or food storage which typically involved social interaction and the consumption of food. It was an object that connected the community together whether it was for daily feasting, daily tasks, ritual, or storage. 

Through exploration and research, people have gathered that the vessel could be expressing more than just a “jaguar motif but rather it is representing the Mesoamerican sun god" making it a product of transnationalism combining Mesoamerican rituals with Greater Nicoya daily life (Snarskis 1981, 197). The jaguar symbolizes strength and power. The modeling of the jaguar head is often replicated, showing the “humanlike pose of the paws on the legs" and the “decorative bands of motifs that represent smaller silhouetted jaguars, floral patterns or constellations” (Snarskis 1981, 197). The jaguar is an animal that doesn’t have intense reactions unless when threatened, this is why the jaguar is growling at the viewer to show it as a predator. It’s strong. By possibly representing a God, a symbolic animal, or a powerful social figure in society, one could assume that it was a product for funerary or spiritual ritual use, further enhancing and believing in the real sacred power of the jaguar.

Through observation, we can gather that Jaguar Vessel was used for functional and communal purposes and it has a distinctly unique design with its jaguar representation. Not only did it have utility but also the painting style of the molding (anthropomorphic) represented that the vessel has more historical context by being multi-purposeful/multi-functional. This can be anything.

Works Cited:

Abel-Vidor, Suzanne, Dirk Bakker, and Michael J. Snarksis. Between Continents/Between Seas: Precolumbian Art of Costa Rica. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1981

Lesure, Richard. "Vessel Form and Function in an Early Formative Ceramic Assemblage from Coastal Mexico." Journal of Field Archaeology 25.1 (1998): 19-36.

Saunders, Nicholas. "Predators of Culture: Jaguar Symbolism and Mesoamerican Elites."World Archaeology 26.1 (1994): 104-17.