Buff-on-red Truncated Wall Jar signed Marie and Julian [SOLD]

Maria and Julian Martinez are equated with the successful revival of pottery at San Ildefonso Pueblo.  They were married in 1904 and spent their honeymoon at the St. Louis World’s Fair.  She was 17 years old and already quite an accomplished potter.  She and Julian specialized in making traditional San Ildefonso Pueblo Polychrome jars and bowls.  By 1912, they began experimenting with polished Black pottery.  They did not discover blackware as San Ildefonso, San Juan, and Santa Clara had a long tradition of polished black pottery.  Their discovery was the Black-on-black pottery technique, placing a matte black design on a polished black jar or bowl.

Black-on-black pottery has its genesis in Buff-on-red pottery.  Buff-on-red pottery turns into Black-on-black during the firing process.  The red clay at San Ildefonso is high in iron content and, when fired in a reduction firing—starved of oxygen—then the red clay undergoes a change to black.

This Buff-on-red jar has been fired, only it was fired in an oxygen atmosphere and not starved of oxygen during the firing process.  It is an early example of Maria and Julian pottery during the formative years of the work for which they would become famous.

Condition: structurally in excellent condition but there is some roughness to the slip just below the rim.

Provenance: from the collection of a family from Pennsylvania

Reference and Recommended Reading: The Legacy of Maria Poveka Martinez by Richard L. Spivey, 2003