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Pedestal dish
Panama (Macaracas style)
Period VI-B
AD 800-1000
Object Place: Panama, Central region
Medium/Technique
Earthenware with red, purple-maroon and black on cream slip paint
Dimensions
Height x diameter: 16.5 x 25.9 cm (6 1/2 x 10 3/16 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Timothy Phillips in honor of Dennis Carr
Accession Number2019.1987
CollectionsAmericas
ClassificationsCeramics – Pottery – Earthenware
DescriptionTall pedestal dish painted on its interior with the image of a shaman’s transformation from human to spirit realm, likening this unobservable transition to the agile motion of an earth-living crocodile as it slips below the water’s surface. Serrated lines fill the background to create visual agitation that shatters the flat surface into an oscillating three-dimensional space. The jagged edges replicate the shaman’s pulsating trance-vision and allude to his/her penetrating powers and the ephemeral spirit world through which the human-crocodile glides. The solid red color of the humanoid body contrasts with the willowy lines of the head and claws, fixing the body in space while the head and appendages dematerialize in the visionary world. The spiked rays between the figure’s legs point perpendicular to those of the background, breaking the composition’s hypnotic horizontal energy and invoking the multi-directionality of the shamanic journey.
ProvenanceBetween about 1963 and 1979, acquired in Panama by Dr. Glenn E. Murphy (b. 1922 – d. 2010), Balboa, Panama and New Smyrna Beach, FL [see note]; about 2000, sold by Dr. Murphy to Dr. Alan Grinnell, Los Angeles; 2014, sold by Dr. Grinnell to Anthropos Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA; 2014, sold by Anthropos Gallery to Timothy Phillips, Boston; 2019, gift of Timothy Phillips to the MFA. (Accession Date: December 11, 2019)
NOTE: Dr. Glen Murphy was an educator for the Panama Canal Zone government, who resided in Panama beginning in 1963. He had previously been there for the State Department as early as the 1950s. Dr. Murphy moved back to the United States with his household goods, including his collection of ceramics, in 1979.
NOTE: Dr. Glen Murphy was an educator for the Panama Canal Zone government, who resided in Panama beginning in 1963. He had previously been there for the State Department as early as the 1950s. Dr. Murphy moved back to the United States with his household goods, including his collection of ceramics, in 1979.