Stirrup Spout Bottle: Frog
Not on view
Moche artists were close observers of the natural world, and their early ceramics often depicted animals with considerable fidelity. Made before molds were commonly used, these effigies demonstrate an expansion of the sculptural possibilities of clay vessels. Here, a Moche potter shaped the bottle’s body in the form of a toad and carefully rendered its coloration pattern with slip (a suspension of clay and/or other colorants in water). The artist also sculpted a slight bulge to indicate the swollen throat of a male frog calling out. The toad’s body is surmounted by a stirrup-spout, a characteristic feature of ritual vessels on Peru's North Coast for about 2,500 years.
Frogs and toads are not an uncommon subject in Moche art. It is difficult to determine with any precision what the creatures may have signified—there was no tradition of writing in the Andes before the 16th century—but their sudden appearance after rain, sometimes in great numbers, may allude to ideas related to fertility and regeneration.
The Moche (also known as the Mochica) flourished on Peru’s North Coast from 200–850 CE, centuries before the rise of the Incas. Over the course of some seven centuries, the Moche built thriving regional centers from the Nepeña River Valley in the south to perhaps as far north as the Piura River, near the modern border with Ecuador, developing coastal deserts into rich farmlands and drawing upon the abundant maritime resources of the Pacific Ocean’s Humboldt Current. Although the precise nature of Moche political organization is a subject of debate, these centers shared unifying cultural traits such as religious practices (Donnan, 2010).
References and Further Reading
Castillo, Luis Jaime, Cecilia Pardo, and Julio Rucabado. Moche y sus vecinos: Reconstruyendo identidades. Lima: Museo de Arte de Lima, 2016.
Donnan, Christopher B. “Moche State Religion.” In New Perspectives on Moche Political Organization, edited by Jeffrey Quilter and Luis Jaime Castillo, pp. 47-69. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2010.
Donnan, Christopher B. Ceramics of Ancient Peru. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles, 1992.
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