Tradition
Pueblo Pottery
Southwestern USA · Ancient – present
Earth, rain, and ancestors. The living tradition.
In the American Southwest, pottery has been made continuously for over a thousand years—and it's still evolving.
Pueblo pottery traditions stretch back to the Ancestral Puebloans who built cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon. Each Pueblo developed distinctive styles: the black-on-black of San Ildefonso, the polychrome of Acoma and Zuni, the micaceous clay of Taos, the carved redware of Santa Clara. The pottery is made without wheels, built by coiling and scraping, often fired outdoors using traditional fuels. Maria Martinez of San Ildefonso revived and transformed the black-on-black technique. Today, Pueblo potters navigate between honoring ancestral techniques and pushing into contemporary expression.
How does tradition enable rather than constrain creativity?
Techniques
- Coiling
- Burnishing
- Outdoor firing
- Polychrome painting