Stirrup-spout bottle with feline

Stirrup-spout bottles in the shape of a feline were a favored subject on Peru’s North Coast from the first millennium BCE through the time of the Spanish invasion in the sixteenth century. Early examples were ceramic; this one was made of pieces of hammered silver sheet joined together to create the effigy cat. The circular pelage markings suggest the fur of a jaguar, the largest felines in South America. Also known as otorongos, a Spanish term derived from Quechua, jaguars were a subject of enduring popularity in ancient Andean art. As one of the largest predators in the region, jaguars were an apt symbol of dominance and power.

This vessel was reportedly part of a large group of silver objects recovered from a single site on Peru’s North Coast—in one account, the site of Mocollope, in the Chicama Valley; in another, in the Moche Valley, near Chan Chan, capital of the Chimú kingdom. The group includes a range of forms, from elegantly plain, tall beakers to containers in the form of human figures and animals. Chan Chan itself was famed for its artists, and a striking percentage of the population, perhaps twelve thousand in this city of forty thousand, was engaged with craft production (Topic, 1990). The city was a rich prize for the Incas when they conquered the North Coast around 1475 CE; later historical accounts note that the Inca captured the Chimú silversmiths and pressed them into service in Cusco, the Inca capital high in the Andes. Other Chimú metalworkers were relocated to the Lake Titicaca region (Zori, 2016). This strategy of breaking up conquered polities was designed to diffuse the Chimú kingdom’s power and potential threat. The Incas’ keen interest in metalworking, however, also reminds us of the importance of these ritual objects and their makers in Andean statecraft.

Joanne Pillsbury, Andrall E. Pearson Curator, Arts of the Ancient Americas, 2025

References and Further Reading

Pillsbury, Joanne. “Drinking with Dead Kings: Ritual and Rulership in the Kingdom of Chimor. World Art, 15(1)(2025): 193–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/21500894.2025.2449865

Topic, John R. “Craft Production in the Kingdom of Chimor.” In The Northern Dynasties: Kingship and Statecraft in Chimor, edited by Michael E.Moseley and Alana Cordy-Collins, 145–76. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1990.

Zori, Colleen. “Valuing the Local: Inka Metal Production in the Tarapacá Valley of Northern Chile.” In Making Value, Making Meaning: Techné in the Pre-Columbian World, edited by Cathy Lynne Costin, 167–92. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2016.