A Laguna polychrome olla
With pronounced lower shoulder, globular body and short raised neck, painted with a single design band of conjoined outlined khiva step devices alternating with pinwheel or stylized floral motifs within a circular medallion, thin banding lines above and below, the underbody slipped right to the base and painted with a pair of thin linear U-forms, pairs of dots appearing on the rim interior.
height 10 1/2in, diameter 11 1/2in
height 10 1/2in, diameter 11 1/2in
Sold for
US$ 59,750
inc. premium
Footnotes
- Ex-Elkhart Collection, Santa Fe, New Mexico
See Vincent, Brydon, and Coe, Page 210, Fig. T111, for A Polychrome Olla, Santa Ana, Pueblo, circa 1830, with similar kiva designs. The Santa Ana olla illustrated in Vincent, Brydon, and Coe, is in the Thaw Collection at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York.
The mixture of design, style, form, and construction materials in this bold and handsome jar proclaims the confluence of ideas from three Keres language Pueblos Acoma, Santa Ana, and Laguna. New concepts in pottery structure and decoration were developing across the Pueblo world at this time, with exchanges occurring through numerous visits from one village to another to learn the latest trends. The basic ideas for materials had reached Laguna from Acoma a century earlier, when Laguna was being organized as a new village after the chaotic Pueblo revolt and reconquest by the Spanish. The form, with relatively tall neck and bulbous middle body, follows developments that commenced at Acoma in the late 1700s, but here we see a distinctive and persistent Laguna spin in the slightly concave contours of the underbody. The signature of Santa Ana influence shows in the decorative style of the middle body. Declaring a new degree of design innovation, the potters of Santa Ana were at that time experimenting with the depiction of relatively massive red figures devoid of fussy embellishments. The idea was popular at Laguna for a couple of decades; at Santa Ana it persisted through much of the 1800s. The prominent triangular figures with stepped sides on this jar trace their origin to a least a century and half earlier. At Santa Ana they evolved into the 'Eiffel-Tower' design that occurs for decades with only slight variations at that village. On this Laguna jar these figures join in intimate contact to circular wheels containing 'propeller' blades. An unusual addition to the decoration on this jar is seen in the V-shaped figures encircling the surface of the underbody. This nearly unique occurrence on Laguna pottery finds its nearest ancestor on jars made at the Tewa-language Pueblos, a hundred miles to the northeast, during the last half of the 1500s. A more common Laguna design element occurs within the neck of this jar, and consists of pairs of large red dots around the circumference. -F.H.H.
Category: Ethnographic Art / Native American
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