Adobe Gallery Blog

Much praise has been bestowed on Marie Z. Chino for the magnificent pottery she made in the fifty years she devoted to the craft and the praise is certainly earned. Chino was a master potter and it is understandable why collectors admire her work so enthusiastically. She was certainly one of the Acoma potters who made particularly important contributions to the art of pottery making in the period following World War II. Chino was making Southwest Indian pottery as early as the 1920s.

Chino is considered one of the significant ceramicists at Acoma and was the matriarch of a very talented family of potters. She is best known for her black-on-white pottery.  Along with Lucy Lewis and Sarah Garcia she led the revival of the ancient pottery forms of the ancestral pueblo potters. She was one of the women who was inspirational in the movement to revive the use of ancient Mimbres designs on contemporary Acoma pottery.

It has been stated that Lucy Lewis was so enchanted with the Zuni Pueblo heartline deer on their pottery that she asked the elders for permission to use it on her pottery.  I have found no evidence that Marie Z. Chino followed Lucy's lead in requesting permission from Zuni, however, she has been using heartline deer on her pottery for quite some time.  Perhaps Lucy Lewi's use of the design was sufficient for other potters to assume it to be okay to do so, too.

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