Magnificent Santa Clara Pueblo Carved Red Globular Pottery Jar by Autumn Borts Medlock [SOLD]

This Magnificent Santa Clara Pueblo Carved Red Globular Pottery Jar by Autumn Borts Medlock appears to be a celebration of spring with tulips and poppies about ready to bloom.  The flowers that hang down are poppies and the erect ones are tulips. There are two butterflies busily pollinating the open ones.  The artist highlighted the leaves with green pigment, probably a natural mineral source.  The carving is deep into the clay body and expertly rendered.  Each carved line is clean and precise. The area of the vessel exposed behind the carving was slipped with micaceous clay.  The red slip was highly burnished with a stone.

Autumn Borts Medlock (1967-) is a granddaughter of Mary Cain and daughter of Linda Cain.  She is an extraordinary potter with a very creative talent for design execution as seen with this creation.  She truly did a magnificent job of integrating the unopened flowers, the fully opened ones, the large leaves and the butterflies.  The result is a beautiful presentation of butterflies and flowers, items of nature, displayed on a clay vessel made from the earth that has been stone polished to a high sheen. It’s almost as if the flowers are growing from the clay.

Condition: excellent original condition

Provenance: from the estate of Santa Fe dealer and collector Martha (Marti) Struever, who passed away in August 2017.

Recommended Reading: Fourteen Families in Pueblo Pottery by Rick Dillingham

Relative Links: contemporary pottery, Autumn Borts Medlock, Mary Cain, Linda Cain