Zia Pueblo Large Polychrome Pictorial Jar [SOLD]

Elizabeth Medina (1956-) could possibly be listed as a potter from Jemez Pueblo because that is where she was born.  When she married Marcellus Medina of Zia Pueblo in 1978, she moved to Zia and received permission from Zia elders to make pottery in the Zia style.  Her teacher was Sofia Medina, her new mother-in-law. Because she has been at Zia Pueblo and has made pottery in the Zia style most of her adult life, she is referenced as a Zia potter and most properly so.

Marcellus Medina (1954-) is a native of Zia Pueblo, the son of Sofia and Rafael Medina.  He paints his wife’s pottery and does watercolor paintings. His specialty is using acrylic paints to paint figures on his wife’s traditional pottery, however, on this jar, he used traditional Zia mineral and vegetal paints, something he was doing in the early 1980s.

It appears that Medina paid tribute to New Mexico’s three Indian tribes—Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo—in this jar.  There is an Apache Gaan Dancer, a Navajo runner, and a Pueblo Buffalo Dancer. His creative designs and refined details have earned him a reputation as one of Zia’s finest pottery painters, and he is currently the only painter at Zia producing pictorial designs on pottery.  At some point in his career, after 1980, Medina switched from using mineral paints to acrylic paints.

Condition: this Zia Pueblo Large Polychrome Pictorial Jar is in excellent original condition

Provenance: from the collection of Santa Fe dealer and collector Martha (Marti) Struever who passed away in August 2017.  It is quite likely that Marti retained this jar because it was painted in traditional Zia pigments and not with acrylic paints.

Recommended Reading: The Pottery of Zia Pueblo by Harlow and Lanman

Artist photo courtesy of Reference: Southern Pueblo Pottery: 2,000 Artist Biographies by Gregory Schaaf.