Acoma Pueblo Pottery Water Canteen with Tularosa Design by Juana Leno [SOLD]

The bulbous body of this Acoma Pueblo pottery canteen was decorated in a design from ancestral Tularosa people by artist Juana Leno.  Tularosa designs relied heavily on spirals and parallel lines. .Around the outer circle of the design is a series of zigzag lines hovering over a long and thin triangle of mostly dark pigment.   The back side or bottom of the canteen was slipped in the traditional manner of red clay. The canteen sits on this red underbody with the spout just slightly above center point.

Pueblo pottery canteens, such as this Acoma example, were essential to the survival of the men when tending their crops in the arid desert of the American Southwest.  A canteen of this size would provide sufficient water to sustain a man while in the fields. 

Water is essential to life of humans and plants.  In the American Southwest, water is scarce and the indigenous people of the area have ceremonies pleading for rain, women decorate pottery with rain symbols, dancers wear stepped tabletas representing clouds, dance costumes feature rain symbols, Katsina masks have symbols representing rain, and drums simulate thunder, all in petition to the spirits to provide rain.

“Paintings, textiles, pottery, baskets, sculpture, katsinas, musical instruments, jewelry, and other artifacts and art objects express in form, decoration or function some aspect of the desert tribes’ intimate relationship to the primal power of life-giving life-sustaining rain.” [Marshall, 2000]

The use of Tularosa designs by potters of today shows their respect for those who came before them and for the beautiful works they left behind.  Certainly, potters a hundred years from now will reciprocate and use designs from the twentieth- and twenty-first century potters—a continuation of tradition.

Condition: this Acoma Pueblo Pottery Water Canteen with Tularosa Design by Juana Leno is in very good condition

Provenance: from the extensive collection of pottery from a resident of Washington

Recommended Reading: Acoma & Laguna Pottery by Rick Dillingham

Relative Links: Southwest Indian Pottery, Acoma Pueblo, Contemporary Pottery, Juana Leno