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84
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Sound stone with stylised arrowhead profile
Speckled green s…
See original version (French)
84
-
Sound stone with stylised arrowhead profile
Speckled green s…
See original version (French)
Estimate €800 - €1,200
Voluntary lot
Description
Sound stone
with stylised arrowhead profile
Speckled green stone, carved and polished.
Valdivia / Chorrera, Ecuador, 2300 to 2000 BC
21.5 × 13.5 cm
Provenance: sale by Maître Desbenoit-Fierfort, Drouot Paris, 10 March 2009, lot no. 176
Attributed to the transition between the end of Valdivia and the beginning of Chorrera, this sonorous stone illustrates a formal research that is rare in early Ecuadorian production. The extreme reduction of volumes, the balance of full and empty spaces, the graphic power of the outline and the delicacy of the two small suspension lugs create a strikingly modern object, evoking certain abstract sculptures of the 20th century. Researchers in the field have suggested that it might have been a lithophone - a sound stone used for percussion - but its exact use has yet to be confirmed. The object could just as well have been part of a ritual register, in which the form itself, deliberately stripped bare, carried an autonomous symbolic language.
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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