Historic Zia Pueblo Large Dough Bowl

The potter of this gorgeous dough bowl did not stray from painting the traditional dough bowl design that has existed for the last few hundred years. Dough bowls were not needed and not made before the 1700s when the pueblo people accepted the Spanish influence of flour for making bread. Prior to that, the pueblo used corn and cooked it on a stone. With this advent of white flour, we see the introduction of such large bowls.

Containing a customary brick red color on the underbody, a thin cream band separates the lower portion and the upper, decorated half. The same cream white color was used in the slip, which was a common practice in the making of almost all Zia dough bowls. On this bowl there are black, kite-shaped, stylized birds seen as a part of the motif, and what look to be floral symbols set on rectangular cream slips occurring twice around.

Decorations on dough bowls developed directly from the style used on water jars. [Harlow & Lanmon, 2003:240] The inch-wide red band encircling the bowl has been named a "cadre figure" and it alternates from near the rim and near the bottom of the design panel. It is outlined on top and bottom by a thin black framing line. In this cadre figure, there is a pair of white triangular-shaped elements known as "pupils in the eyes of the cadre figure", the shape of which has changed over the decades. The eyes on this bowl are defined as from the middle period of development (1830-1900).

Condition: The bowl does not visually reveal any damage or restoration, however black light examination reveals the bowl might have had some restoration over an area of a crack.

Provenance: this Historic Zia Pueblo Large Dough Bowl is from the collection of a resident of Santa Fe

Reference and Recommended Reading:  The Pottery of Zuni Pueblo by Dwight P. Lanmon and Francis H. Harlow 

TAGS: Pueblo Pottery, Zia Pueblo, Tsi-ya