Beaker with faces, snakes, and pumas
Not on view
Beakers with faces featuring pronounced noses resembling bird beaks have been found on Peru’s Central and South coasts. This one is unusual, as it has a face on either side and is enlivened by two feline heads and two undulating serpents above the faces.
According to newspaper accounts in 1900, this beaker was found on a farm near Lima, Peru, and was sent by “the orphans of Lima” to the New York Herald to be auctioned for the benefit of those left fatherless and motherless by the great Galveston storm of 1900—the single most deadly natural disaster in U.S. history.
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