Aztec pitchers

Fired clay and paint Aztec pitchers, National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City.

These pitchers belong to an Aztec tradition of redware pottery with black designs that originated at Tetzcoco in the Basin of Mexico. The conquistadors who accompanied Hernán Cortés noted beautiful displays of pottery in the great market of Tenochtitlan. Objects such as these pitchers were purchased at markets for home use. The designs on these vessels are generally described as hastily rendered geometric patterns with shell-like forms... Pitchers such as these could easily have been used to pour ‘pulque’.

Adapted from ‘Aztecs’ (Royal Academy of Arts exhibition catalogue, London, 2002), p.453.

Photo by Ana Laura Landa/Mexicolore