Zia Pueblo Polychrome Jar with Capped Spiral Design

It is always a pleasure to acquire an item of pottery and then discover that it was photographed almost 100 years ago on a shelf in a shop in Santa Fe.  That is what we found with this Zia jar.  It is a jar that has all the attributes of having been made around 1900.  There is a published photograph of it that was taken in the Julius Gans Store in Santa Fe in 1921.  The photograph has been published in The Pottery of Zia Pueblo by Harlow and Lanmon, page 335.

The main design on this jar has been designated as “capped spiral design,” a design which had its birth at Zuni Pueblo with what has been designated as the “Rain Bird Design.” As the Rain Bird Design was adopted by artists at other pueblos, it morphed into different appearances.  At Zia, it developed into the capped spiral.  The spiral is the curved or circular element and the capped portions are the two triangular designs each filled with parallel straight lines.  The trident design inside the spiral was an innovation starting as early as 1840 and continuing onward.

The jar is unusual for the time period because of the lack of red pigment in the design. The vessel shape of the jar is much more like a Trios Polychrome shape than that of a Zia Polychrome, but the transition from one period to the other was a slow process so it is not unusual to see the influence of one on the other.

The wide pair of framing lines on the shoulder of the jar got their start around 1820 and continued to around 1900.  The neck design features a continuous chain of rainbow arcs above which are cloud elements just below the rim.

The jar dates to circa 1900 or a little earlier.  The fact that it was photographed in 1921 does not indicate that it was new then.  It may have been purchased by Julius Gans as an older jar or even possibly it sat on a shelf in his store for 20 years.   Interestingly, the small chip on the rim is visible in the photograph so the chip has been there since 1921 or earlier.

Condition: one small rim chip and a vertical crack that has been stabilized but not concealed.

Reference and Recommended Reading: The Pottery of Zia Pueblo by Harlow and Lanmon

Provenance: from a family collection from Colorado