Cambodia, Khmer, Angkor period, Bayon style, 12th to 13th century AD. A fine sandstone relief carving, surely once part of a pediment frieze of female dancers (Apsaras). The female pictured is in a typical pose with torso leaning to the proper right, left arm upraised and hand curled backward. Her outfit is elaborate and it might mean she was a lead, central dancer in this Celestial dance still performed by the locals in Cambodia today. Eyes are wide open and a slight smile on her face makes it a very pleasing image. Measures 14"H x 8"W x 3.50"D.

Provenance: Old private collection, New Mexico, early 1970's.

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Cleanly broken across upper area at a diagonal from left arm (elbow area) through bottom left ear lobe area, through neck region, and out through right side cutting across right ear ornament. This is the only break that separated the fragment! It is a clean break, with very minimal, small loss. No new material is present along this break. As can be seen from the photo of the reverse side of the frieze - there is an orange-ish colored swath of fill which indicates this more vertically oriented fracture line (which never went very far or separated the stone,) luckily, only had losses on reverse side of panel. This fill material helped stabilize the stress crack and make break strong again. On front side of crack, damage is barely visible, but is mentioned here for the sake of clarity. On front, there is only a small trace of orange fill material having seeped through crack line towards bottom where it stopped. Almost non-existent and hardly noticeable! Same for main horizontal break. Neither one of these fractures deters from the beautiful image. The frieze carving is in, otherwise, very fine condition. No damage or loss to the face, headdress, torso, arms or hand, or to any details and delicate sculpting of the lacy garment."