Santa Clara
$ 1300
plsc1k290
Black-on-black jar with a 4-panel geometric design above the shoulder
5 in H by 6.5 in Dia
Condition: Very good with a rub on the shoulder
Signature: Cresencia Santa Clara Pueblo
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Cresencia Tafoya
1918-1999
Santa Clara
Cresencia Tafoya was born into Santa Clara Pueblo during the flu pandemic of 1918. She was the second of 11 children and, when she grew up and married, she had 6 children of her own. She was the daughter of Tomacita Gutierrez Tafoya and Cruz Tafoya. Her maternal grandmother was Pasqualita Tani [Gutierrez] Tafoya, the younger sister of Serafina Tafoya. To say she grew up in the company of traditional potters is an understatement.
Cresencia started producing pottery on her own around 1940. She became known for her black-on-black pieces, her carved black seed pots, her wedding vases and her oval polychrome redware bowls. Among her favorite designs were the avanyu, bear paws, clouds, kiva steps, and feathers-in-a-row.
Cresencia was a participant in the Santa Fe Indian Market from 1978 to 1989 and earned multiple ribbons there, especially for her wedding vases. She also exhibited often at the Eight Northern Pueblos Arts & Crafts Show.
Cresencia taught all her children: Arthur Tafoya, Harriet Tafoya, Annie Baca, Pauline Martinez and Mark Tafoya, how to make pottery the traditional way, well before she passed on in 1999.
Some of the Awards won by Cresencia
- 1978 Santa Fe Indian Market, First Place for a wedding vase, First Place for a black-on-black wedding vase and Third Place for a black jar
- 1979 Santa Fe Indiamn Market, Second Place for a vase and Third Place for a wedding vase with a matte design
- 1980 Santa Fe Indian Market, Second and Third Place ribbons
- 1981 Santa Fe Indian Market, Second and Third Place ribbons
- 1983 Santa Fe Indian Market, Third Place for painted designs on a burnished red or black surface
- 1984 Santa Fe Indian Market, Third Place for a wedding vase
- 1986 Santa Fe Indian Market, First Place for a piece in the Miscellaneous category
- 1988 Santa Fe Indian Market, Second Place for a wedding vase
- 1989 Santa Fe Indian Market, Third Place for a piece in the Miscellaneous category, which includes canteens and plates
Santa Clara Pueblo
Ruins at Puye Cliffs, Santa Clara Pueblo
Santa Clara Pueblo straddles the Rio Grande about 25 miles north of Santa Fe. Of all the pueblos, Santa Clara has the largest number of potters.
The ancestral roots of the Santa Clara people have been traced to the pueblos in the Mesa Verde region in southwestern Colorado. When that area began to get dry between about 1100 and 1300, some of the people migrated to the Chama River Valley and constructed Poshuouinge (about 3 miles south of what is now Abiquiu on the edge of the mesa above the Chama River). Eventually reaching two and three stories high with up to 700 rooms on the ground floor, Poshuouinge was inhabited from about 1375 to about 1475. Drought then again forced the people to move, some of them going to the area of Puye (on the eastern slopes of the Pajarito Plateau of the Jemez Mountains) and others to Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan Pueblo, along the Rio Grande). Beginning around 1580, drought forced the residents of the Puye area to relocate closer to the Rio Grande and they founded what we now know as Santa Clara Pueblo on the west bank of the river, between San Juan and San Ildefonso Pueblos.
In 1598 Spanish colonists from nearby Yunque (the seat of Spanish government near San Juan Pueblo) brought the first missionaries to Santa Clara. That led to the first mission church being built around 1622. However, the Santa Clarans chafed under the weight of Spanish rule like the other pueblos did and were in the forefront of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. One pueblo resident, a mixed black and Tewa man named Domingo Naranjo, was one of the rebellion's ringleaders. When Don Diego de Vargas came back to the area in 1694, he found most of the Santa Clarans on top of nearby Black Mesa (with the people of San Ildefonso). An extended siege didn't subdue them so eventually, the two sides negotiated a treaty and the people returned to their pueblo. However, successive invasions and occupations by northern Europeans took their toll on the tribe over the next 250 years. The Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 almost wiped them out.
Today, Santa Clara Pueblo is home to as many as 2,600 people and they comprise probably the largest per capita number of artists of any North American tribe (estimates of the number of potters run as high as 1-in-4 residents).
Today's pottery from Santa Clara is typically either black or red. It is usually highly polished and designs might be deeply carved or etched ("sgraffito") into the pot's surface. The water serpent, ("avanyu"), is a traditional design motif of Santa Clara pottery. Another motif comes from the legend that a bear helped the people find water during a drought. The bear paw has appeared on their pottery ever since.
One of the reasons for the distinction this pueblo has received is because of the evolving artistry the potters have brought to the craft. Not only did this pueblo produce excellent black and redware, several notable innovations helped move pottery from the realm of utilitarian vessels into the domain of art. Different styles of polychrome redware emerged in the 1920's-1930's. In the early 1960's experiments with stone inlay, incising and double firing began. Modern potters have also extended the tradition with unusual shapes, slips and designs, illustrating what one Santa Clara potter said: "At Santa Clara, being non-traditional is the tradition." (This refers strictly to artistic expression; the method of creating pottery remains traditional).
Santa Clara Pueblo is home to a number of famous pottery families: Tafoya, Baca, Gutierrez, Naranjo, Suazo, Chavarria, Garcia, Vigil, Tapia - to name a few.
Santa Clara Pueblo at Wikipedia
Pueblos of the Rio Grande, Daniel Gibson, ISBN-13:978-1-887896-26-9, Rio Nuevo Publishers, 2001
Upper photo courtesy of Einar Kvaran, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
Pasqualita Tani Gutierrez Family Tree
Disclaimer: This "family tree" is a best effort on our part to determine who the potters are in this family and arrange them in a generational order. The general information available is questionable so we have tried to show each of these diagrams to living members of each family to get their input and approval, too. This diagram is subject to change should we get better info.
Pasqualita Tani Gutierrez was the sister of Sarafina Tafoya.
- Pasqualita Tani Gutierrez (1883-) & Severiano Tafoya
- Petra Montoya (Pojoaque)(1905-) & Juan Isidro Gutierrez (Santa Clara, 1901-1977)
- Gloria Goldenrod Garcia & John Garcia
- Jason Okuu Pin Garcia
- Desiderio Star Gutierrez & Genevieve Tafoya
- Debra Duwyenie & Preston Duwyenie (Hopi)
- Lois Gutierrez (1948-) & Derek de la Cruz
- Juan de la Cruz
- Thelma (1946-) & Joe (1940-) Talachy (San Juan)
- Maria Minnie Vigil (1931-)
- Annette Vigil
- Virginia Gutierrez (daughter-in-law of Petra, Nambe/Pojoaque)(1940-2012)
- Gloria Goldenrod Garcia & John Garcia
- Tomacita Gutierrez Tafoya (1896-1977) & Cruz Tafoya (1889-1938)
- Cresencia Tafoya (1918-1999)
- Annie Baca (1941-)
- Pauline Martinez (1950-) & George Martinez (San Ildefonso) (1943-)
- Harriet Tafoya (1949-) & Elmer Red Starr (Sioux) (1937-)
- Ivan Red Starr (1969-1991)
- Norman Red Star (nephew) (1955-)
- Cresencia Tafoya (1918-1999)
- Celestina Naranjo & Salvador Naranjo
Some of the above info is drawn from Pueblo Indian Pottery, 750 Artist Biographies, by Gregory Schaaf, © 2000, Center for Indigenous Arts & Studies. Other info is derived from personal contacts with family members and through interminable searches of the Internet.
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