Baking Pot Codex Restoration Project, Belize

Painting Technique and Decorative Scheme

Fragments forming a discrete paint layer are presumed to have a ground layer in common, although the decorative paint scheme may vary across the surface, or differ from one side to the other of an object. The ground was applied to the object surface, followed by application of discrete non-layered paint colors. There were no discernible tool marks in the paint or ground layer to indicate how they were applied, with the exception of the black painted lines (see below); use of a brush is assumed. The paint surface is very smooth, but without specific evidence of burnishing.

Polychrome decoration

A varied palette of paint colors was used on three different ground types – smooth cream, rough cream and white. The colors were applied in a fairly even layer, which in most of the samples averaged approximately 20µm in thickness; the ground layers ranged between 80 and 150µm in thickness. The colors did not bleed into the ground or into adjacent colors, indicating that one material was relatively dry before another was added; they only overlapped slightly at design edges.

Nine colors were documented on samples with the smooth cream ground: bright green, faded green, olive green, blue, salmon red, yellow, cream, white and black. Seven colors were documented on samples with the rough cream ground: bright green, faded green, blue, salmon red, yellow, white and black. The designs were generally rendered as curvilinear color areas (see Figure 15 and Figure 20).

In the case of the white ground, six colors were documented (see Figure 16 and Figure 21, shown below). The most common were bright green, salmon red, white and black; cream and brick red also occurred. The bright green had a consistent thickness of about 20µm.  The salmon and the brick reds were the thinnest of all, averaging 4µm and 7µm respectively; other colors ranged between 6 and 45µm.

Click on image to enlarge.

Finely delineated color areas were created using a decorative technique unique to this ground type, visible in the several cross-sections (see Figure 22). Bright green paint was applied to the ground, leaving voids for other colors. A white paint, containing a large amount of aragonite, was applied in the voids to bring the level up to that of the green, often overlapping slightly at the edges. This white area was sometimes painted over with salmon red in an extremely thin layer. Black, when it occurred (most frequently on the bright green), was applied into a fine groove that had been incised into the underlying color and, in some cases, into the ground. The slight curvature at the base of the grooves provides an indication of a specialized tool for this pigment application.

Monochrome decoration

Green was the color of choice in the monochromatic applications, utilized in conjunction with two ground types.

The red-flecked white ground was painted with the faded green color (the same color, used on a cream ground, is seen in the lower right column in Figure 20). This ground type had an uneven surface upon which the paint layer was applied; as a result, the paint layer exhibited varying thickness. It may have been applied to the ground before it was fully dry, resulting in some blending of the color with the ground at the interface.

The brown ground averaged approximately 150µm in thickness, at the thick end of the range. In cross-section, an intermediate thin grainy red-colored layer was occasionally detected, and may represent a highly localized application of red on what is otherwise a brown ground (see Figure 20, Figure 28, and Figure 29). It measured no more than about 50µm. (Note: a number of fragments preserved only this red layer, with remnants of a crumbled-off brown portion.)

Bright green was the only color used in conjunction with the brown ground. It was considerable thicker and more variable in the brown-only samples, between approximately 60-150µm in some samples, and approximately 250µm in other examples. On red-and-brown samples, it was between 50 and 75µm.  In both cases, some of the green particles blended in with the upper part of the ground, possibly indicating that the ground layer was not fully dry or leveled when the green paint was applied.

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