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Unknown, Mata Ortiz and Casas Grandes, A polychrome jar decorated with a sgraffito and slipped four panel wildlife, bird, branch, leaf and geometric design
Mata Ortiz and Casas Grandes
$ 1100
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A polychrome jar decorated with a sgraffito and slipped four panel wildlife, bird, branch, leaf and geometric design
9.25 in L by 9.25 in W by 12 in H Measurement includes stand
Condition: Very good
(505) 986-1234 - www.andreafisherpottery.com - All Rights Reserved
Artists Formerly Known
All Pueblos
Several hundred years ago, during the times of the great Southwest migrations, communal feasting developed as a means of meet-and-greet for integrating or rejecting newcomers into established villages. That's about the same time large open serving bowls came into existence. Families would prepare their specialty dish and bring it to share at the feast in their own bowls. When the feast was over, they retrieved their bowls and went back home until next time. They found ways to differentiate each family's bowls from the others, making them easy to recognize and retrieve. Those innovations have, in some cases, carried forward almost to today. Some were in the actual construction of the pots while others were in the execution of the decorations on them.
For instance, Nampeyo was known to have added an extra coil to the rims of her pieces, as she was aware of that being a breakage point should the piece actually be put into some kind of use. Today, "use" is not a consideration and rims have consequently become very thin. Nampeyo was also known for decorations that were slightly off balance, not quite direct copies of anything else on the piece.
Florentino Montoya, of San Ildefonso, was known for particular off-balance flourishes in his designs, used today to identify his pieces as he never signed any. He and his wife, Martina Vigil, were making pottery in the late 1800's. It was they who got Maria Martinez started when she was a young girl.
In general, most pieces of pottery made before the early 1950's were unsigned, their creators, for the most part, now unknown. Only a very few potters, ones who had become convinced of the monetary value of their name on the bottom of a piece, signed anything.
Maria Martinez of San Ildefonso was one of the very first, beginning in 1922. That caused a problem as the outside world then came looking for her in particular, as someone they really wanted to do business with. Then, in 1926, she added her husband's name to the signature as he was doing all the decorating for her. That caused another upheaval among the pueblos as the making of pottery was long considered to be "women's work."
Nampeyo, at Hopi, was also getting established as a potter of note around the same time, but she never learned English, never learned to read or write. As Nampeyo went blind and other members of her family began painting for her, some would sign pieces with her name and theirs, as in "Nampeyo Fannie," on a pot made by Nampeyo and painted by her daughter Fannie. Nampeyo's niece Daisy painted some, too, usually signing some version of "Nampeyo Daisy" or "Nampeyo DHN". Nampeyo's daughter, Annie Healing, worked side by side with Nampeyo for years, doing a lot of her decorating, but Annie never signed either name to anything. At this point in time, we know what to look for to attribute the making and decorating of a pot to Nampeyo but with pieces made after about 1920, it's essentially impossible to tell what was done by Nampeyo and what was done by Annie.
As the outside world began to learn of Nampeyo's art and the art being produced by others on the Hopi mesas, some of the traders, dealers and archaeologists who went to Hopi found that most potters had a hard time reading and writing English. They also didn't recognize the English names that had been given to them. Knowing the value of being able to attribute a particularly well-done piece to a particular potter, the dealers and traders began putting effort into getting the potters to develop "hallmarks," icons to use as identifiers. Marcia Rickey, with her "Flying Ant" avatar was one of the first of those. Sadie Adams with her five-petaled flower was another. Others developed over the years include "Frogwoman" (Navasie family), "Featherwoman" (Naha family), "Carried in Beauty" (Preston Duwyenie), "Antelope Woman" (Zella Cheeda) and more. In the early 1950's that developed into more full-scale signatures, although many continued adding family and clan hallmarks, some just adding small indicators of their own (such as: a distinct "Featherwoman" feather with an "S", meaning Sylvia Naha).
The 1950's saw a renaissance in pottery making among virtually all the pueblos, and with that came full signatures almost everywhere, some with hallmarks and some without. And some potters still use only hallmarks...
Mata Ortiz and Casas Grandes
The macaw pens at Paquimé
Casas Grandes is both a municipality and an archaeological district in northern Chihuahua State, Mexico. The archaeological district includes the pre-historic ruins of Paquimé, a city that began to build around 1130 AD and was abandoned about 1450 AD. Archaeologists are uncertain as to whether Paquimé was settled by migrants from the Mogollon/Mimbres settlements to the north or by Anasazi elite from the Four Corners region in the United States or by others. Over the years Paquimé was built into a massive complex with structures up to six and seven stories high with multiple Great Houses in the surrounding countryside. Today, the site is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Mata Ortiz is a small settlement inside the bounds of the Casas Grandes municipality very near the site of Paquimé. The fortunes of the town have gone up and down over the years with a real economic slump happening after the local railroad repair yard was relocated to Nuevo Casas Grandes in the early 1960's. The town was in steady decline until Juan Quezada, a poor farmer who gathered firewood in the area of the archaeological site, was inspired by fragments of ancient Paquimé pottery and even older fragments of Mimbres forms with bold black-on-white designs littering the ground to learn more.
Ramos Polychrome effigy pot from Paquimé
Quezada was successful in his quest to learn to recreate the ancient process using slightly more modern techniques (although no one in the present tradition uses a potter's wheel). He learned to use sand and other coarse materials for temper. He discovered that dried cow dung made an excellent and inexpensive firing fuel. Instead of using gourds for smoothing he substituted broken hacksaw blades. Instead of using yucca fiber brushes for painting he learned to make brushes with human hair. He persevered in his efforts and by 1971 had produced a kind of polychrome pottery. Since then, most pottery-making in the area has used innovations in the design and decoration of the pots but the materials and the basic crafting of the process have remained the same.
By the mid-1970s, Quezada had attracted a significant number of traders and his work was becoming a commercial success. That is when he began teaching his techniques to his immediate family. They in turn taught other family members, friends and the younger generations. Both women and men were included from the beginning.
Originally called Casas Grandes pottery in the early years of its production, the potters of this tiny village have made such an impact on the pottery communities, including many awards and special recognition from the Presidents of Mexico, that Mata Ortiz pottery is now becoming known around the world.
Today, pottery production has changed the village in many ways as there is now electricity, plumbing, vehicles and more for the residents. Virtually everyone in the small town (2010 population: 1,182) makes their living by working in some part of the pottery-making process, from potters to clay-gatherers to firewood collectors to traders.
Mata Ortiz pottery incorporates elements of contemporary and prehistoric design and decoration, and each potter or pottery family produces their own distinctive, individualized ware. Young potters from surrounding areas have been attracted to the Mata Ortiz revival and new potting families have developed while the art movement continues to expand. Without the restraints of traditional religious practices or gender constraints, a vibrant flow of new ideas has enabled the pottery of Mata Ortiz to avoid the derivative repetition common to virtually all folk art movements. This blend of economic need, gender equality, cultural expression and artistic freedom has produced a unique artistic movement in today's community.
Lower photo is courtesy of David Monniaux, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
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