MEZCALA STONE TEMPLE LATE PRECLASSIC, CIRCA 300-100 BC

Acquired by the grandfather of the current owner in the 1960s

Thence by family descent

Mezcala temple models were collected as early as the 19th c. by William Niven among other explorers in Guerrero. Their appeal blossomed in the 1960's after publications by Miguel Covarrubias, and Carlo Gay's "Mezcala Architecture in Miniature" ( in Jones, Houses for the Hereafter, Funerary Temples from Guerrero, Mexico, From the Collection of Arthur M. Bullowa, New York, 1987, pp. 9-10). 

This andesite temple is carved with stairs to the upper platform, here supporting two broad columns with a banded, tapering roof comb. See Gay and Pratt, Mezcala, Ancient Stone Sculpture from Guerrero, Mexico, Geneva, 1992, p. 179, fig. 114, for the type.