San Ildefonso Pueblo Black-on-cream Pottery Bowl by Blue Corn [SOLD]

This San Ildefonso Pueblo pottery bowl by Blue Corn is strikingly beautiful in its very simplicity. A grayish cream slip is highlighted with two simple bird-like designs.  A checkerboard design encircles the rim. The interior has been slipped in red clay.

Blue Corn and her husband, Sandy, spent two years in the 1960s experimenting with slips to revive the 19th-century Polychrome wares of San Ildefonso Pueblo. She stone-polished the base slip in the manner it was done before the introduction of the Cochiti slip in 1905, which required only rag polishing. In doing this, she achieved a highly-burnished finish. To this she applied the matte paint design at which she was so adept.

Blue Corn (1921-1999) was one of the most honored of 20th century potters. She received the 1981 New Mexico Governor's Award (New Mexico's highest artistic award); she was acclaimed for her artistic accomplishments in the Wall Street Journal; and in AMEPNKA, a Soviet journal. She won awards at State Fairs, Indian Market, and other exhibits. She was featured in a full-page article in the Wall Street Journal in 1973.  During World War II, when scientists were frantically trying to beat German scientists in creating an atomic bomb, Blue Corn worked as a domestic for the chief scientist and director Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, New Mexico.  

Condition:  this San Ildefonso Pueblo Black-on-cream Pottery Bowl by Blue Corn is in excellent condition.

Provenance: from a client in New Jersey who is downsizing and found it necessary to release some of her collection of pueblo pottery.

Recommended Reading: PUEBLO POTTERY MAKING—a Study at the Village of San Ildefonso by Carl Eugen Guthe (1893–1974)