Santa Clara Pueblo Polished Red Slip Melon Shape Pottery Jar by Angela Baca [SOLD]

Award-winning Santa Clara Pueblo artist Angela Baca has long been associated with her ability to produce beautiful red and black pottery jars with melon ribs. Works in the melon style are first coil-formed with a large diameter coil and allowed to dry to a leather-hard state. They are then carved with the distinctive ribs. After carving, the work is slipped in iron-bearing red slip, intricately stone-polished and then fired in either a smothered, reduction atmosphere to achieve the superb black finish, or in an oxidizing atmosphere to achieve the red finish.

This red melon jar features 32 ribs, each of which was stone polished. The depressions between the ribs were also stone polished. The underside of the jar is signed Angela Baca Santa Clara.

Angela Baca (1927-2014) is most likely represented in every collection of contemporary pottery with one of her black or red melon jars, the style and shape that has been associated with her since the 1960s. She was probably the first potter to produce melon jars. I recall that the very first purchase I made at The Covered Wagon in Albuquerque in the 1960s was a black melon jar by Angela Baca at a price of $35. I was so impressed when I saw it that I put it on lay-away immediately.

Others must have thought like me because Angela’s pottery received awards at Santa Fe Indian Market every year she entered for competition.  She also was awarded Best of Show at the Heard Museum and was presented with a Special Award by the French government. Her pottery was included in an exhibit of pottery by Maria and Julian Martinez in 1984 at a gallery in New Jersey and included in an exhibit of pottery by Margaret Tafoya at Sid Deusch Gallery in New York in 1985.

Condition: there are a couple of pinhead size spots on the rim which are minor.

Provenance: this Santa Clara Pueblo Polished Red Slip Melon Shape Pottery Jar by Angela Baca is from the collection of a resident of Santa Fe

Recommended Reading: Santa Clara Pottery Today by Betty LeFree

Relative Links: Santa Clara Pueblo, Severa Tafoya, Southwest Indian Pottery, Angela Baca, Santa Clara Pueblo Pottery