Best Photos of the Day

Artemis Fine Arts will host its American Frontier | Ethnographic | Tribal Art auction on August 24, 2026, at 9:00 AM GMT-6, live from Louisville, Colorado. Featuring a diverse array of legally acquired and guaranteed works, the sale brings together historic artifacts from the American, Spanish, and Mexican frontiers alongside exceptional Native American, Ethnographic, Tribal, Oceanic, and Spanish Colonial pieces. In this image: 1900s Native American Top Hat - Seed Beads and Horsehair Band. Estimate: $1,600 - $2,250.

19th C. Iberian Tapadero Stirrups, Hooded Wood Body, Brass Toe Plates. Western Europe, Portugal / Spain. A pair of box stirrups, each made from panels of hardwood into a shoe-shaped shell with a hooded front that encloses the rider's foot. Flat brass panels cover the toe of each stirrup and are secured with round-headed rivets along the edges. An iron band wraps the body of each stirrup and rises into a shaped, crested suspension loop for attachment to the saddle leathers. Estimate: $1,700 - $2,500.

Tairona Tumbaga Gold Labret - Filigree & Granulation Crest. Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Tairona. A hollow, cap-shaped labret of cast tumbaga, its burnished dome rising from a plain cylindrical collar and crowned by an arched crest of openwork. Twisted wire mimicking braided rope frames a register of pierced loops, punctuated by granulated spheres set at the apex and at each volute-curled terminus, the whole finished with a raised roped border. Estimate: $1,600 - $2,250.

Lakota Sioux Beaded Moccasins and Strips, Hourglass Motif, ca. 1870-1910. Native American, Plains, Sioux (Lakota). A pair of hard-sole hide moccasins worked in lane-stitch glass seed beads, together with two long beaded strips of the type sewn to the yoke, sleeve, or hem of a hide shirt or dress. Estimate: $1,400 - $2,000.

Ancient Panamanian 22K+ Gold Amphibian Amulet. Pre-Columbian, Central America, Panama. A gold amphibian amulet cast by the lost wax (cire perdue) process and testing at 92 percent gold, equivalent to 22 karats or higher. The slender creature has a pair of laterally protruding arms, a small head with four spiraling protrusions surrounding bulging eyes and lips, and a broad flattened foot extending from the leg base. Estimate: $1,400 - $2,000.

Two 19th C. Moroccan Silvered Iron Stirrups - Floral Scrollwork. North Africa, Morocco, Islamic tradition. A pair of shovel-form riding stirrups raised from sheet iron, each broad square footplate sweeping upward through steeply flaring sides to a shouldered arch pierced for the suspension strap. Silver plating covers the arches and outer flanks, finely incised with vegetal scrolls, rosettes, and interlaced geometric banding in the idiom long favored by Moroccan metalsmiths, the pale tracery playing against the dark iron beneath. Estimate: $1,300 - $1,900.

Peruvian Chancay Wood Tomb Guardian Figure, Painted Head, Camelid Wool Textiles. Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chancay. A carved wood funerary figure, the broad rectangular head is painted in a red cinnabar-based pigment, a form recalling the false heads mounted on Chancay mummy bundles. Estimate: $1,200 - $1,800.

Chupadero Black-on-White Bowl, Anasazi Jornada Mogollon. Native American, Southwest United States, Anasazi (Ancestral Puebloan), Greater Mogollon, Northern Jornada (Sierra Blanca) White Ware, Chupadero Black-on-White. A hemispherical earthenware bowl whose plain exterior gives no hint of the interior's disciplined geometry. Within, a mineral-black design unfurls across the wall: bold solid bands and stepped triangles set against panels of fine parallel hatching, the whole organized into repeating sections that circle the vessel and terminate in a heavy painted rim line. Estimate: $800 - $1,200.

Greater Nicoya Polychrome Group, Bird Vessel, Dog Tripod, Seated Female. Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, Greater Nicoya. A trio of buff-slipped ceramics painted in the black and red-orange vocabulary of Greater Nicoya. The largest is a round-bottomed jar modeled as a bird, its head and flaring tail rendered as opposed lugs, the swollen body banded with chevrons and hatched triangles. Estimate: $1,000 - $1,500.

Etruscan Terracotta Votive Left Foot, Naturalistic. Italy, Etruria, Etruscan culture, ca. 4th to 2nd century BCE. A complete and purposeful rendering of the human body in part, this terracotta votive depicts a left foot modeled with quiet realism and devotional intent. Shaped not as a fragment but as an intentional offering, the form stands as a clay surrogate for flesh and bone, presented to the gods in hope of healing, protection, or gratitude. Estimate: $1,200 - $1,800.