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

by Carl E. Guthe

PLATE 6

Courtesy K. M. Chapman

PRESENT-DAY POLYCHROME WARE BY MARIA MARTINEZ

are becoming rare, and the older vessels, which are naturally the best material for study, are now almost gone from the villages. Some pieces, however, are still left, and many more are in the hands of Mexicans and Americans living in the Southwest. These should be got into the custody of museums as rapidly as possible, for pottery is fragile stuff and every year sees the breakage of many unreplacable old vessels.

Excellent work in collecting and preserving the older pieces is being done by certain residents of Santa Fe, who have organized the “Southwestern Pottery Fund”. In spite of limited resources they have got together a most remarkable collection from the Eastern pueblos, and are constantly adding to it as specimens come into the market.

A plate showing a typical example of old modern decorated ware from each of the pottery-making pueblos is here given, in order that the reader may appreciate the striking differences which obtain ([pl. 3]); San Ildefonso vessels of this period are illustrated elsewhere (pls. 4, 5).

In closing this introduction something should be said of the older San Ildefonso wares, and of the remarkable renaissance which has led to the high artistic achievements of the present-day potters.

Of the pottery made at San Ildefonso during the early historic period we have as yet no definite knowledge, but from the fact that the sherds at the ruined pueblo of Cuyamongé, a Tewa village only a few miles from San Ildefonso which was abandoned in 1698, are closely similar to the seventeenth century wares of Pecos, we may conclude that the San Ildefonso product of that time also bore resemblance to that of Pecos. The Pecos wares in question have as yet been but briefly described.[3] The following are the leading varieties: rough black cooking ware; polished red; polished black; and decorated ware of two varieties, black-on-buff, and black-and-red-on-buff. The ornamentation is in heavy black lines, for the most part sloppily drawn, but the designs are bold, free, and effective. Although these styles all differ to some extent from the ceramics of late nineteenth century San Ildefonso, the artistic and technical relationship of the two groups is evident at a glance. The principal differences lie in the much greater amount of polished red found at Pecos, and in the absence from Pecos of a black-on-red decorated ware made at San Ildefonso.