Adobe Gallery Blog
Seated Male Storyteller Figurine with One Child by Helen Cordero - 25779
When Helen Cordero created what today is known as the Storyteller figurine, she reinvented a longstanding but inactive Cochiti Pueblo tradition of figurative pottery, a tradition dating back to the 1880s. She ignited a revolution in pueblo ceramic figurative pottery comparable to the revivals by Nampeyo of the Tewa village at Hopi and by Maria Martinez of the Tewa village of San Ildefonso.
Helen Cordero started making pottery figurines in the late 1950s, mostly small frogs, birds, animals and small people. When she exhibited her pottery at a Santo Domingo feast day, folk art collector Alexander Girard bought all of the little people figures. He asked her to make more people figurines and bring them to him. He then asked her to make a larger seated figure with children. It was then that Helen began visioning her grandfather, Santiago Quintana, who was a good storyteller and grandchildren were always around him.