COLUMBIAN HISTORICAL EXPOSITION AT MADRID. 



353 



Fig. 34. 



JICARA FORM IN POTTERY. 



Some of the Quiche idols bear fine striations, which lead one to sus 

 pect that the surface has been finished with a coarse brush , 



Several vases have been covered with a creamy or red enamel-like 

 slip. Slipping was practiced usually on the finer 

 wares intended for decoration in color. The tri 

 pod fluted vase of Quiche ware, No. 5, has a gray, 

 lustrous enamel, which causes it to resemble 

 stoneware. The paste could not be examined 

 but the ware rings. It is probably one of the 

 few examples in which accident rather than de 

 sign conspires to fuse the slip. 



The coarse ware is often incised with a crude 

 ornamentation of short furrows and numerous 

 projecting spines and broadly modeled faces 

 (masks). 



The fine ware is very well painted in red and 

 black on creamy ground. The subjects are hu 

 man figures, geometries and the cartouch-like 

 Maya hieroglyphics called katuns. One splen 

 did Quiche jar (Xo. 23), 7 inches high and 5 Guatemala. 

 inches in diameter, is of fine red paste covered 



with cream enamel-like slip, painted with human figures and katuns in 

 lively red, outlined in black. The jar sits in a similarly painted shallow 



dish supported on three tubular legs. 

 Yase No. 75, of jicara form, is decorated 

 with two rolled-out impressions of a 

 complex stamp which was about 4 

 inches in width. The subject is two 

 human figures, and the stamp as repre 

 sented in the impression is the finest 

 piece of ancient fictile work with which 

 the author is acquainted. This vase is 

 now in possession of the museum of 

 the University of Pennsylvania and 

 will be figured. 



The finer vases in Guatemala take 

 the globular form of the jicara, which 

 are familiar objects from Mexico arid 

 Central America at present, where they 

 are worked into chocolate cups, carved 

 or etched on the outside (fig. 33). In 

 the region of the &quot;gourd tree&quot; these 

 cups have been used from time im 

 memorial, and it is interesting to ob 

 serve that the chocolaterias of Spain 

 preserve this form, and that the old stone inetates are used in that 

 country still for grinding cacao in chocolate making. 

 II. Ex. 100 23 



Fig. 35. 



INCISED FIGURE AND CARTOUCHE CONTAINING 

 KATUNS. 



From a Quiche-Maya vase. Guatemala. 



