Santa Clara Pueblo Polished Black Jar [SOLD]

LuAnn Tafoya (1938- ) has been a consistent award winner every year since 1980 and the ribbons keep coming in, deservedly.  She is a master potter and has been recognized as such by judges and collectors. Her burnishing is unequal, forms are well balanced, and pottery designs executed to precision.

LuAnn Tafoya, a daughter of Margaret Tafoya, certainly inherited the talent to produce beautifully sculpted jars with outrageously burnished surfaces. She has made jars almost three feet tall, a feat not easily accomplished. Her grandmother, Sara Fina Tafoya, was a masterful potter, as was her mother, Margaret, who, in turn, passed on this artistic gene to nine children and numerous grandchildren.

This jar has a rounded lower half that rolls inward on the upper half.  Around the top section, LuAnn shaped the area into rain clouds of the style seen in Native paintings and in painted pottery from other pueblos.  The result is a contemporary expression of a traditional theme.

Condition: new

Provenance: this Santa Clara Pueblo Polished Black Jar is from the artist

Recommended Reading:  Born of Fire: The Pottery of Margaret Tafoya by Charles King