This small bowl exhibits an outstanding pictorial quality in a sober bicromia of coffee on yellowish cream, characteristic of the style of the ceramic workshops of the zone of Lagunillas, Nayarit. With numerous fine straight ascending and descending diagonal lines, four bands were formed that refer to water currents that surround the entire outer surface of the recipient.
Each pair of bands presents tiny vertical lines in the middle and in the angular sections, while the two pairs of bands are divided by the wide band and unpainted zigzag that configure the currents mentioned; this band in turn shows two horizontal zigzag lines that also evoke flowing waters. With no margin for error, due to the impossibility of correction, the work of the painter required an extraordinary ability to "draw" the linear motifs with a fine brush, following the circumference of the container.
The artist shaped the figurative image of a moving body of water with abstract geometric forms; perhaps the exterior of the vessel alludes, with its "waves", to an aquatic content that the bowl once had, whose interior looks dark and with traces of wear in the lower half.
The painting is completed with slightly curved vertical lines that touch the edge of the mouth, while other forms can be seen near the base. The fact that it was decorated even in the non-visible part of the vessel - if we consider that there are indications that it was ed on the base and not upside-down - reveals the symbolic character of the artistic composition. When we place the bowl with the opening downwards, at the base we see other abstract designs that I identify as a solar representation.
A simple Greek cross occupies the center, around an unpainted circle there are numerous motifs similar to oars and painted as solid forms of remarkable thickness, each pair is matched; enclosed by a thick slightly curved zigzag line. The artistic solutions allow noting that they are elements of a different type, that is to say, they are not aquatic motifs. The cross in the center alludes to the cardinal directions, while, from comparisons with other works of the same Lagunillas style, I interpret the radial composition described as a sun.
The location of the sun at the base of the work is highly significant, as it symbolizes the daily age of this astral body through the underworld. In the worldview of the culture of the shaft tombs, and of the other peoples of Mesoamerica in general, it was conceived that during the night the sun traveled through the lower stratum of the universe, which was primarily thought of as a maritime domain. The bowl expresses this idea with an eloquent creativity: on its walls this aquatic world was formed and, literally, beneath it the sun; it is therefore a nocturnal sun.
In the previous exegesis participates the funeral context in which, with great probability, the bowl took part. In the culture of the shaft tombs, vessels such as the one in question were an important part of the tombs of the dead, whose common burial was either in a shaft or chamber tomb. In accordance with the cultural concepts in which it was created, this subterranean architectural enclosure belongs, at the same time, to this lower level of the vertical structure of the cosmos. So, the physical location of the bowl would be fully consistent with the image of the nocturnal sun in the aquatic underworld, painted with mastery, in this beautiful bowl.
