The piece is of great interest because it bears witness to the long and complex history of the art of the ancient West, in regard to the existence of a long cultural tradition from the Middle Preclassic to the Early Classic, and also the links with the Andean region.
What gives the name to this type of vessels is the inverted "u" or horseshoe shaped cylindrical element, known as a "stirrup", which could function as a handle and also as a spout, since it is hollow, allowing the contents to flow out of the spherical portion that makes up the lower part of such vessels.
In the Mesoamerican West, the vessel with stirrup handle has an ancient presence; its origin dates back to the Capacha culture, whose temporality, in broad , can be placed between 1500 or 1200 and 800 or until 300 B.C. This was uncovered by the anthropologist Isabel Kelly in Colima and southern Jalisco, later their vestiges were also found in center and northwestern Jalisco. The stirrup vessel is among the evidence of the remote historical relations between the western region and the South American northwest; the model is older in Ecuador and the fact that its configuration does not replicate natural forms, shows that it was transmitted.
With regard to the history of the West, multiple testimonies, such as burial grounds, shaft tombs and chamber tombs, and burial ceramic art, determine that the shaft tomb culture is direct heiress of the Capacha; together with that of the El Opeño, contemporary to the latter, constitute the most distinctive cultural tradition. In this sense, the vessel we see is traditional and also typical of its time, since in the Capacha art the top section that finished the stirrup was another vessel shaped like a pitcher which has the shape of a human head with a circular hollow at the top serving as the mouth of the vessel. This form shows the accentuated figurative character of the ceramic shapes created by the people of the shaft tombs of the year 300 B.C.
This work is unique in their artistic repertoire. I have not identified any other that resembles it; due to the fine and simplified facial features, and the fact that it is a vessel, I attribute it to the "elephantine" style, with outstanding mass and where the details were made using pastillaje, in this case, the "coffee bean" shaped eyes (like a tablet with a horizontal groove in the center) and the head band, on the front it refers to hair and in general to a mecapal.
Very few examples of the elephantine style are known; three others can be seen in the collection under the care of the Amparo Museum, one of them with a mecapal; to a greater or lesser extent their hollow bodies resemble containers. It is a style with prominent features shared with other styles; among them, of the Tuxcacuesco-Ortices are the mentioned forms of the pastillaje, and of the Ameca-Etzatlan the type of paste and the treatment of the surface.
Apparently, the color of the piece is red, but almost all of it is covered by deposits of earth, no doubt accumulated over the centuries, as a burial offering. The tip of the nose is missing and more than ears we see earrings, which consist of numerous rings arranged horizontally along the lobes.
The view of the base of the vessel allows us to talk about the process of creation: the center has a circular depression indicating that the dried shell of a pumpkin was used as a mold for the lower half, the rest was modeled. The basic technique is called winding: from the inside of the shell the body of the vessel would be constructed by means of elongated cylinders of clay arranged in a spiral that would then be smoothed and polished to eliminate the ts.
