Collections: Merle Greene Robertson Collection of Rubbings of Maya Relief Sculpture

Introduction

The Merle Greene Robertson Collection of Rubbings of Maya Relief Sculpture, whose acquisition began in 1969, contains nearly 2,000 rubbings made on handmade Japanese rice paper with either thick sumi ink or oil paints. This corpus is of major importance for art historians, archaeologists, and Maya epigraphers, as it provides full-scale records of Maya sculpture and hieroglyphic writing primarily from Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras. Many of the original stone monuments are, as yet, unpublished and/or inadequately photographed. The collection's importance is further magnified due to subsequent physical deterioration of the monuments. Some of them have already been looted from their sites, while most of the rest continue to deteriorate and weather in the jungles of Mexico and Central America.

The rubbings provide a permanent record of the size and condition of the monuments at the time the rubbings were made in the 1960s and early 1970s at dozens of Maya sites.

Selected Rubbings

Advantages of Rubbings

Rubbings have a number of advantages over other methods of recording stone sculpture, including:

1. Rubbings record the exact size of the sculpture
2. Rubbings are proof as to the direction in which features are oriented on the surface
3. Rubbings can record high and low relief with no distortion, and low relief that would be in shadow in a photograph
4. Being full scale, rubbings make it possible to detect minute details in patterns of clothing and extremely fine, shallow lines which are important parts of iconographic elements
5. On very large monuments with curved surfaces, rubbings may be the only true illustration of the relationship of the parts to the whole
6. Rubbings made on handmade rice paper will last for centuries and remain in perfect condition

(Robertson, International Congress of Americanists, 1976).

Reference Works

[Maya rubbings. By]
Robertson, Merle Greene.
[ S.l.] : [s.n.] 1973.
v. (loose-leaf) ; 29 cm.
Latin American Library Rare Books
The photographs are useful for identifying particular images and sometimes can be used instead of the rubbings, which are quite delicate.

Rubbings of Maya Sculpture Iconographic Database
(Precolumbian Art Research Institute)
The Rubbings of Maya Sculpture database uses keywords developed by Dr. Merle Greene Robertson. An "Additional Notes" field has been added to provide bibliographical citations and commentary.

Merle Greene Robertson's Rubbings of Maya sculpture computer file (CD-ROM)
Robertson, Merle Greene.
San Francisco, Calif. : Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, c1995.
12 computer disks : 4 3/4 in. in booklet-holder
(15 x 15 cm. + 1 pamphlet ([7] p. ; 12 x 12 cm.) + 1 card (12 x 13 cm.)
Latin American Library (Ask at LAL Office)
This CD-ROM set provides high-resolution images that afford much greater detail for scholarly investigation.