San Ildefonso Polished Red Dish by Maria Martinez [SOLD]

This polished red dish, void of any painted designs, was made by Maria Martinez (1887-1980) of San Ildefonso Pueblo. It is signed Marie, a signature first used by Maria in 1923. The Marie & Julian signature started in 1925, therefore this dish dates to 1923 or 1924. Although Julian's name is not included on this dish does not mean he was not involved in its production. Julian would have been the one to dig the clay and return it to the pueblo, and he would have been the one who built the firing kiln and fired the dish. The lack of his name on the earliest signed pottery was because it was traditional for pottery to be woman's work, so any assistance by a man was not noted. Eventually, men were considered artists who painted pottery, and not ones who made pottery, so the man was not doing woman's work.

Maria and Julian's early pottery was the traditional Polychrome wares that were prevalent at San Ildefonso Pueblo. In 1908, Dr. Edgar Lee Hewett encouraged Maria to make pottery of the style being excavated on the Pajarito Plateau. All of the ones she made then were of the Polychrome style. It was not until around 1912 that Maria and Julian began producing plain polished black ware of the style traditional to the northern pueblos—San Ildefonso, San Juan, Nambe, and Santa Clara. Black pottery existed at these pueblos at the time, and before, but Maria and Julian refined it and achieved a much more highly polished finish. In 1919-20, they developed the Black-on-black technique, the pottery that made them internationally famous.

The difference between black pottery and red pottery is nothing more than a firing technique. All black pottery starts off as redware, as in this dish. A deep red slip is placed over the tan color clay, highly polished, and then prepared for firing. If the fire is allowed to burn out naturally, the pottery will come out of the firing in the color red. If the fire is smothered with manure at the later stages, so that the fire is starved of oxygen, the pottery will come out black. Ceramicists, describing ancient styles of Old-World pottery, state that iron impurities in clay form red oxide at red heat, but if air is lacking during firing, iron impurities in clay form black magnetite. The local red clay is heavy in iron content so turns black in a reduction firing.

Maria and Julian produced traditional San Ildefonso Polychrome pottery, highly polished red and black pottery, and finally, black-on-black pottery. They were masters at all techniques. Redware is scarcer than blackware and Maria and Julian were encouraged to make black because it was in high demand on the market, much more so than red. Fortunately, they did make some redware.

Condition: very good condition with minor scratches and abrasions that are visible under magnification but not distracting normally.

Provenance: this San Ildefonso Polished Red Dish by Maria Martinez is from the collection of a gentleman from Albuquerque

Recommended Reading: The Legacy of Maria Poveka Martinez by Richard L. Spivey