Polychrome vase

At some point fourteen hundred years ago, a Classic Maya potter and a painter worked in unison on a bowl. Perhaps they were the same person. The potter coiled, smoothed, slipped, and burnished the clay. Stepping in, the painter adorned the surface or gouged out a design. The bowl, still leather hard, went back for firing. After breakage or long use the pot entered the ground as a scatter of sherds or a whole object. If complete, it found its way into a cache, a deep cave, or a tomb. There it …