Adobe Gallery Blog

This is a traditional Tesuque water jar or olla. True to tradition, the jar was constructed of native clay, slipped with a rag-wiped bentonite slip and decorated with designs typical of the 1880 period.

Tesuque potters, because of their conservative nature, did not stray into the more commercial pottery that their neighboring pueblos fell into; rather, they kept to the traditional shapes and designs used by their predecessors. The red rim and red band near the underbody qualify this jar as a Tesuque Polychrome vessel.

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