The bowl offered here (11.25" x 6.2") is pictured and described in Barbara Moulard’s epic book “Within the Underworld Sky”, Twelvetrees Press, 1981, Plate 98, p. 150 and I quote “The large rounded Gila Polychrome, with its low shoulder and flair rim, is a classic form of Salado ceramics. The exterior is covered in red paint and the interior slipped in white. Although the Gila painting style has little in common with the Mimbres Black-on-white tradition, being more akin to pre-Hopi, Anasazi pottery painting, the shape of the vessel and the design layout have a precedent in Mimbres flare-rim painted vessels.

The structural areas of the bowl’s interior have separate decorative elements: a negative diamond band circles the rim and a broad broken “life line” band inscribes the complex interior composition in the center of the bowl. The composition is divided by opposing chevrons and filled with a sampler of Salado rectilinear patterning. The central focus of the painting is the pair of solid black, opposing parrot motifs which are pendant to the chevrons. They form an hourglass configuration in the center of the bowl. The parrot may have been a symbol which was associated with sun cults. The hourglass motif, as well as the cross, may have had similar connotations, with the cross representing the annual path of the sun. Both the parrot and the sun may have also been sky and underworld symbols. Like many other prehistoric Southwest decorated ceramics, this bowl probably functioned on both a utilitarian and sacred level.”