Pueblo pottery making: a study at the village of San Ildefonso

by Carl E. Guthe

First the pieces are gone over with a clean dry cloth to take off the guaco ashes and any dust that may remain from the oven ([pl. 27], b). Each vessel is then wiped with a slightly greasy cloth, which gives a faint sheen to the surface and removes the blue tinge which is apt to be found in the black guaco-covered areas. Some potters have substituted a chamois skin for this second cloth. It took the two women shown in pl. 27, b, just fifteen minutes to wipe with the two kinds of cloths the twenty-two vessels figured. When the wiping is done, the pottery is carried to the house and stored in one of the rooms. The pieces are placed on the floor, usually with a carpet or rug under them, and covered with a sheet to keep off dust and flies.

The time occupied in each of the individual stages of pottery making has been considered, but the total time, from the beginning of the moulding until the finished vessels are placed in the store room under a sheet, is far in excess of the mere sum of the separate hours and minutes used in each process. Household duties and other tasks are constantly interfering with the work. About nine o’clock on a certain morning one potter began moulding the first of a group of perhaps forty pieces. The scraping was commenced on the morning of the third day, and the polishing on the fourth morning. Nothing was done on the fifth day, but early on the sixth the painting began. A fiesta interrupted the work for two more days, and the burning was done on the morning of the tenth day, although it could have taken place on the seventh. Another potter finished burning several large ollas at noon on the ninth day.

PAINTING OF DESIGNS

By means of the decorations on the vessels the potter expresses her personality. The type of design used by any one potter is very constant, and is distinctly individual. It is a comparatively easy matter, by an inspection of the design alone, to distinguish the vessels made by one potter from those of another.

The designs are planned in several different ways. Maria Martinez sits with the bowl in her hands for a few minutes doing nothing; apparently she is working out in her mind the combination of elements which she will use. Designs so conceived are generally simple. Maximiliana Martinez begins painting almost at once. While she is working ideas occur to her and are incorporated. Occasionally, after the painting has been completed and the vessel set aside, she will pick it up again to add some detail. This method of working is apt to cause somewhat involved figures. Antonita Roybal, in choosing her designs, refers to drawings of her own, or to photographs which have come into her hands, of old San Ildefonso vessels. This potter uses a pencil to outline very sketchily the design upon the vessel, as an aid in obtaining the proper symmetry. The figures obtained in this manner are usually very elaborate.[51]

The first lines drawn in a design are almost without exception the enclosing lines under the rim. These are followed by the enclosing lines near the shoulder (in the case of an olla), or near the bottom of the interior (in the case of a bowl). When the design consists of panels, the vertical division-lines are then added. If there are to be four panels, one division-line is drawn, and then the one on the opposite side of the bowl, dividing the surface into halves. Each of these halves is then bisected. The next step is to double all the vertical division-lines. Occasionally each quadrant is judged by the eye only, and the division lines are drawn in sequence about the vessel. When there are to be either more or less than four panels, they are outlined one after the other. No measuring instrument of any kind is used.

After the skeleton of the design has been completed, the outlines of the figure within each panel are drawn. All the lines are first placed in one panel, then the second panel is finished, and so on, until all have been filled with the outlines. All the areas on the vessel that are to be colored black are then filled, followed by the areas which are to be red. The strokes taken in outlining are not always made in the same order in the various panels. Such variation is entirely natural and should be expected in work done without the use of a visible pattern.

When a design is attached to the lower enclosing line of a panel, it usually consists of a repetition of some small figure of one or two elements. The position of such added figures has absolutely no relation in the mind of the potter to the panel-design.

When a design consists of a repetition of figures not enclosed within panels, the painter always refers, before adding another figure, to the amount of the surface as yet unfilled. The correctness of the painter’s judgment is therefore easily determined by the proportions of the last figure in the design as compared with the remaining figures. As a rule, with the product of the present-day potters of San Ildefonso, it is exceedingly difficult to determine in a finished vessel, which of the figures was the last one drawn.

In designs which consist of a single figure, or of two or more figures, with several complex elements, the development of the design upon the vessel is necessarily at variance with that described above. As a general rule, each element is completed, including the filling of areas, before the next element is outlined. Similarly, each figure is finished before the next is begun.