Pre-Columbian Stirrup Vessel
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GUEST:
During the early to late '80s, my sister-in-law lived in Medellin, Colombia, and my father-in-law and mother-in-law made frequent visits to Medellin, ended up making a friendship with an art collector who gave them this as a gift of friendship.
APPRAISER:
For any pre-Columbian piece, we have to look at a number of things, so let's take this step by step and determine first if the piece is authentic.
GUEST:
Sure.
APPRAISER:
The very first thing that we look at is the surface, and as you can see here, we have these little black dots. The little black dots are manganese which occur in a tomb. Now, they can be applied, but that's a good sign. It has abrasions where you'd expect to see the abrasions: here on the ears, and then on the other side. That's also very good. In the pre-Columbian world, duality is a very important theme, and what you see here is a combination of a male and female. And then on the back-- we're going to just turn this-- you see a living figure with a skeleton. Now, death was not final in the pre-Columbian world. It was merely a transformation, and these objects were placed in the tomb to accompany the deceased on his journey to the afterlife. This particular object is classic Calima. Calima is on the coast, central, in Colombia. You see these bands here on the sides-- classic Calima. The way the hands are treated, the face, the double-spouted stirrup vessel, all of that is perfect. That leads me to believe that this piece is authentic.
GUEST:
Really?
APPRAISER:
The date on this is 100 B.C. to 400 A.D.
GUEST:
Really?
APPRAISER:
This is one of the finest pieces that I've seen from this region. This is worth $4,000 to $6,000.
GUEST:
Wow! Wow, that's impressive.
Appraisal Details
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Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."
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