Pseudo-Cloisonne Ceramic Decoration and Iconography
Thomas Holien, Phil Weigand, Nikola Strazicich, others

      The ceramic ware known as Pseudo-Cloisonne is published in only a few scattered locations. These illos are rollout drawings made and published by Carl Lumholtz in his book Unknown Mexico in 1902. They depict the imagery on three small jars located in the American Museum of Natural History, which Lumholtz collected from Estanzuela in central Jalisco. Although these vessels are known to a small group of people, fewer still are aware that there are another 70 vessels, more or less, at the same museum. Not all possess decoration that is this well-preserved, nor do all of the vessels depict living figures, but this is an amazing collection that deserves much more research. This pottery decoration is known from Tula (Tollan phase) and Chichen Itza (Sotuta complex) from the Early Postclassic (A.D. 900-1200), from various locations in western Mexico in the Epiclassic (A.D. 600-900), and perhaps earlier in central Jalisco. The decorative technique has been identified on late Late Formative conch shell trumpets from the shaft tomb at Huitzilapa, Jalisco, excavated by Jorge Ramos and Lorenza Lopez in 1994. Although here I try to provide a general description of Pseudo-Cloisonne, it will be heavily colored by my experiences in central Jalisco, and with the AMNH collection from Estanzuela.

      Pseudo-Cloisonne is an extraordinarily difficult method to decorate a pot. One starts with a previously decorated vessel. Many, perhaps most, Pseudo-Cloisonne pots in the American Museum of Natural History had a previous use-life as a Red on Base or Red and Black on Base vessel. This was also noted for at least one piece in the Museo Regional de Guadalajara, and for the one or two Pseudo-Cloisonne vessels identified from the cenote at Chichen Itza, in the Yucatan. One begins by covering the outer surface of the vessel with a thick cap (a couple of millimeters thick) of grey clay. Designs are then cut into this grey clay in the form of tiny blocks or cells, each corresponding to a separate attribute of the complete design - for example, the individual feathers of a headdress are typically separate cells. Each cell is then filled with bright colored pigment, producing a multicolored design with very thin grey lines separating each colored cell. I don't think the vessel is then fired again. The similarities between this technique and the Cloisonne method of decorating metal vessels in China gives it its name. Thomas Holien's 1977 dissertation examined Pseudo-Cloisonne vessels primarily from a technological and archaeological standpoint. He noted that by far most vessels with this decoration are either small jars and cups, or sometimes larger jars, and he suggested that they formed part of a ritual drinking complex of some kind.

     Iconographically, Pseudo-Cloisonne is intriguing as well. The vessels here are complex, but they have never received any kind of adequate iconographic analysis - at least not a published one. Many have strictly geometric designs - checkerboards, standard Mesoamerican designs such as xicalcoliuhquis (step frets), xonecuillis (s shapes), and so on. But many show figures engaged in a procession or dancing. The use of multiple registers is not uncommon, and the best example is a spectacular jar recovered from northwest Michoacan and on display in the Museo Nacional in Mexico City. Karl Taube has noted their similarity to Teotihuacan imagery, supporting the earlier date in the Classic proposed by Phil Weigand. I have been somewhat skeptical of this, but field evidence may be forthcoming soon.

      One very interesting attribute of these more complex vessels from central Jalisco is the presence of small images (hard for me to make out, frankly) that are sometimes found associated with a figure. Phil Weigand has argued that these constitute glyphs of some sort. None of these are published, unfortunately, but hopefully students of Mesoamerican iconography will become more interested in the West Mexican materials, an untapped source of iconographic data, and give us a hand.
      I hope to convince those currently researching Pseudo-Cloisonne to discuss their work here in the future.

Publications with illustrations:
• Holien, Thomas. 1977. Mesoamerican Pseudo-Cloisonne and Other Decorative Investments. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University. A detailed study of Cloisonne techniques, with figures. Many figures do not reproduce well in the UMI version of his dissertation.
• Holien, Thomas. 1975. Pseudo-Cloisonne in the Southwest and Mesoamerica. In Collected Papers in Honor of Florench Hawley Ellis, edited by Theodore R. Frisbie, et al., pp. 157-177. Summary of the occurrence of the technique in both regions. However, a major problem is that, like many of J. Charles Kelley's students, he focuses so heavily on the question of connections between the two culture areas that he completely ignores the other occurrences of Pseudo-Cloisonne in central and far southern Mesoamerica.
• Lumholtz, Carl. 1902. Unknown Mexico. 2 volumes. MacMillan and Co., Ltd., London (also an American version through Charles Scribner's sons). Includes the 3 plates of rollouts included above, along with black and white images of the small jars themselves. I can put these online because they have long since passed out of copyright.
• Clemency Coggins and Orrin Shane III, eds. 1984. Cenote of Sacrifice: Maya Treasures from the Sacred Well of Chichen Itza Univ. of Texas Press, Austin. Object 107 is a Balam Kanche Red on Slate vessel with a Pseudo-Cloisonne overlay. Object 108 is a collection of PC decorated gourd fragments.
• Díaz, Clara. 1988. Western Mexico. National Museum of Anthropology. GV Editores, Mexico. Includes one photograph of the large Pseudo-Cloisonne vessel, and a detail of some of the figures (Figures 10 and 11).
• Castillo Tejero, Noemi. 1968. Algunas tecnica decoratives de la ceramic arqueologica de Mexico. Serie Investigaciones 16. INAH, Mexico. The clearest and most detailed description of the technique known to me, and compared to other interesting post-firing decorative techniques.
• Weigand, Phil. 1992. Ehecatl. Primer Dios Supremo del Occidente? In Origen y desarrollo de la civilizacion en el Occidente de Mexico, edited by Brigitte Boehm de Lameiras y Phil C. Weigand, pp. 205-237. El Colegio de Michoacan, Zamora, Michoacan. Phil cites Carmen Aguilera, Thomas Holien, Mark Miller Graham, and John Molloy as having been sources of inspiration in this study. He explores the bird man motif in several of the vessels, relating them and the volador ceremony from many of the ceramic models to Ehecatl. Most of the article is context, but there are some specific iconographic interpretations.

Comments to Chris Beekman