As part of the art collection of the shaft tomb culture, the Amparo Museum preserves extraordinary works of the style called Lagunillas, both in the form of sculptures and decorated vessels. The sculptures include male and female figures of realistic and meditative appearance, while vessels include several like this one, painted with abstract images in which it is sometimes feasible to recognize, in part, what they represent, based on the appearance of conventional motifs in the Mesoamerican arts, as well as in the analysis of the constants in the same art of this culture of the Mexican West.
It is possible to say that some abstract designs are also painted on the sculptures. Lagunillas is a town in the southeast of Nayarit which lends its name to a style of ceramic production whose distinctive yellow cream color favored a style popularly denominated "Chinese". The sculptures are well known among the general public; however, the vessels tend to go unnoticed, surely because a large portion were destroyed due to the interest concentrated on the sculptural figures. The Amparo Museum allows us to experience three excellent vessels of the area of Lagunillas, what we now see is one of them.
It is a tall bowl; in the interior we can make out a cream engobe coated with smooth black paint, while the exterior surface is masterfully decorated in black on yellowish cream; it is a circular and concentric composition that surrounds the whole body of the vessel and also covers its base; I distinguish three main sections.
The upper, near the mouth of the vessel, evokes an aquatic environment; it consists of concentric circles, a motif called Chalchihuitl in Nahuatl, which for Mesoamericans represented water or some other vital or precious liquid. These circles are followed by downward "U" shapes and then several curved lines which undoubtedly refer to waves; progressively they decrease their undulation and it is possible that this indicates depth; so the first level contains water in motion, especially on the surface.
The middle section is framed by two reticulated strips with double lines; again, according to the Mesoamerican iconographic repertoire, it is feasible to recognize them as the surface of the earth. Between these two strips we see a broader one that I interpret as an underground stratum: it encloses semicircular forms that refer to cavities and have some organic appearance; they are delimited by zones with tighter punctures or crossed lines; in its middle part a straight rectilinear band was painted that replicates and emphasizes the recesses of the "caves".
On the third level we see a radial composition that I interpret as a Sun: a part of it can be seen on the wall of the bowl; the view of the base makes it possible to fully appreciate that elongated triangular elements with their widest parts forked were painted around a circle; we can see that they are grouped in pairs.
The idea of the structure of the universe materialized in the vertical arrangement of the image set in the bowl, its formal artifices even evoked the depths of the sea and the earth; the work constitutes a cosmogram. It is the visual expression of a worldview and concepts that are eminently abstract. In an intrinsic way, the artistic creativity and quality of the work stands out: the fineness of the lines, the precision and accuracy of the strokes in a three-dimensional body such as the vessel, bear witness to an exceptional painter.
As part of the art collection of the shaft tomb culture, the Amparo Museum preserves extraordinary works of the style called Lagunillas, both in the form of sculptures and decorated vessels. The sculptures include male and female figures of realistic and meditative appearance, while vessels include several like this one, painted with abstract images in which it is sometimes feasible to recognize, in part, what they represent, based on the appearance of conventional motifs in the Mesoamerican arts, as well as in the analysis of the constants in the same art of this culture of the Mexican West.
