Very Large Red Sgraffito Carved Jar [SOLD]

Joseph Lonewolf started a career as a mechanic and then became a trained machinist, making precision parts with fine engraving.  It was this skill that he used to transfer his talent from mechanical objects to precision-carved pottery.  In 1971, Lonewolf returned to Santa Clara Pueblo and put his skills to making pottery as had been taught to him by his mother, Agapita Silva Tafoya.  His father, Camilio Tafoya, had taken him as a child into the mountains where he witnessed petroglyphs carved into caves and on walls of cliffs.  Lonewolf took the lessons of his mother and field trips with his father and combined the two to arrive at intricately-carved designs on pottery.

Two years after returning to Santa Clara Pueblo, Lonewolf made this magnificent jar.  Quite an accomplishment for a beginning potter.  The body of the jar is designed with an elaborate Avanyu with a full array of feathers for the plume and a strong lightning bolt from its mouth. The body of the Avanyu wraps around the vessel and the tail ends up just below the head.  The body of the Avanyu as it encircles the jar is an amazing display of spikes, feathers, zigzags and other design elements.  The neck design consists of several long rain clouds.

If any potter mastered the technique of sgraffito pottery, it must be agreed that it was Joseph Lonewolf. He created the finest designs in sgraffito ever put on the face of a pottery vessel.  Joseph Lonewolf passed away on November 9, 2014 at Santa Clara Pueblo.  He will be missed by his many admiring clients and collectors.  He did, however, leave a legacy that will forever keep him in memory.

The Very Large Red Sgraffito Carved Jar is signed Joseph Lonewolf and has the wolf's head hallmark, numbered 82AS and the numbers 72 below which is the year 1973.

Condition: original condition

Provenance: from the collection of a family from Albuquerque

Recommended Reading: The Pottery Jewels of Joseph Lonewolf, the Dandick Company, Scottsdale, 1975

Photo of Joseph lonewolf courtesy of Rick Dillingham in his book: Fourteen Families In Pueblo Pottery.