Pre-Columbian, Peru, Sican / Lambayeque, ca. 800–1000 CE. A tall drinking beaker raised from sheet silver, its flaring trumpet mouth swelling from a slender waisted shaft and spreading conical pedestal foot. Just below the rim, on opposing faces, a monkey emerges in repousse relief, curl-tailed and splay-limbed, its rounded face punched with wide eyes and a broad grin. The vessel was hammered from a single sheet, the details worked from the reverse and refined with tracers from the front, a technique the north-coast smiths mastered. Beakers of this profile were made in graduated sets for elite feasting and were interred with high-status burials, where chicha served from precious metal marked rank as clearly as any regalia. Size: 4.75" Diam x 9.25" H (12.1 cm Diam x 23.5 cm H).

The Sican (Lambayeque) culture rose on Peru's north coast after the collapse of the Moche, controlling the richest metallurgical tradition of the pre-Inca Andes. Its workshops at Batan Grande produced silver, gold, tumbaga, and arsenical copper in industrial quantity, and elite tombs there have yielded stacked caches of hammered beakers numbering in the dozens, deposited as concentrated wealth rather than as individual grave goods.

Monkeys carry a particular charge in north-coast imagery. Not native to the desert littoral, they arrived through long-distance exchange with the eastern montana and Amazonian lowlands, and their appearance on prestige metalwork signals both exotic luxury and a link to the forested world beyond the Andes. Their association with agility, mischief, and fertility recurs across Andean iconography from Chavin onward.

Provenance: Private American collection. Ex. Eugene Lions Collection, Geneva, Switzerland, active 1950’s - 1970’s. Ex. G. Cardenas Collection, TX.

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Item #73231

Seven minor spots of professional silver solder repairs in the upper portion, otherwise intact, overall excellent condition.