Maya Ceramics
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Painting the Maya Universe Other Ceramics Links The great number of Maya ceramics known today gives us a tantalizing glimpse at the ancient mythological culture of the Maya. . |
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Many of the scribes and artisans who created
these vessels employed the use of Maya hieroglyphic writing.
They would often follow a pattern or sequence of glyphs (known
as the "primary standard sequence") that was originally
thought to be a chant or prayer for the departed. We now know
that much of the writing on these vessels described perhaps
their function and contents, and might even include the name of
the owner or the scribe who painted it.
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One of the most thoroughly researched books available today on this topic is Dorie Reent-Budet's Painting the Maya Universe, sometimes referred to as PTMU. This should be sitting on your bookshelf next to Linda Schele & Mary Ellen Miller's outstanding The Blood of Kings. The author covers pictorial themes, glyph interpretation, painters & workshop locations, and even devotes chapters to the topics of collecting Pre-Columbian art and preserving the archeological record. There are resources relating to PTMU at Thomas Bürglin's site. They include an HTML table & a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with with data on the images from the book. |
The highly recommendable
Painting
the Maya Universe is
available online from Amazon.com
Justin Kerr's Maya Vase Book series
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PTMU employs the photography of Justin Kerr who has
done an incredible job of recording the known corpus of Maya
Ceramics. He invented a method for photographing the vases with
a continuous "roll out", so the entire image can be view at
once. Epigraphers have adapted his assignment of K numbers
as a common reference system for discussing the various pots and
their glyphs.
You can download a huge graphic of a Maya vase roll-out (K4151) by Justin Kerr at Thomas Bürglin's Mesoamerican WWW page. (Thomas also maintains a page of Precolumbian Web Links that he updates regularly.) Brian Ampolsk has a study of K1398 in development, undertaken by the Pre-Columbian Society glyph study group (with an excellent photo from the Maya Vase Books).
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John Montgomery's Maya Polychrome Ceramics drawings 
John Montgomery has silkscreens of
Many thanks to John for permission to use his I want to mention their wonderful Maya page with a nice write-up on John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood (two of the earliest explorers who brought the ancient Maya world to the attention of modern readers). The Maya Bookshelf includes an extensive annotated list of titles that can be ordered online. This is a really thoughtful selection, and includes many hard-to-find items. A first class job, all the way around! |
Visit John's own web site at
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