Offers Now Being Considered: Monochromatic Design Polychrome Laguna Pueblo Olla [SOLD]

Offers Now Being Considered: The owner of this Laguna Pueblo historic olla has suggested we accept offers on the jar. This is not something we have done in the past but are willing to give it a try. If interested in adding this to your collection, send your offer to us by email or call it in to us and we will see if it qualifies as the highest offer. We will accept offers until June 24th at which time the highest bidder will be submitted to the owner to see if it is acceptable. If you have any questions about the jar or the process of making an offer, give me a call.

A polychrome olla of Laguna Pueblo origin, dating to circa 1900-1910. This piece is a superb example of pottery made solely for use within the Pueblo as a truly utilitarian vessel. This work was in fact purchased at Laguna, where it had been in the same family for at least three generations, seeing daily use as a vessel for storing water.

A fine visual statement, this vessel's design field is broken into three sections: mid-body, shoulder, and neck. The underbody and neck interior are slipped the typical orange-red, with a white, rag-wiped slip on the mid-body. The upper field is worked in black mineral pigments on white, with a lovely arrangement of white ellipses, split with an interior motif of bilaterally paired triangular elements, with white tear-drop motifs defining the space between each elliptical motif. The shoulder is worked with two bold, unbroken framing lines; the interior space activated by running split rectangles. The field at mid-body is defined with a series of ellipses, again with interior split curvilinear motifs, adjacent to block geometric and fine-line detailing.

The split leaves in the design on the lower body and the split rectangular bars at the shoulder of the jar are more typical of pottery from Laguna than of Acoma Pueblo. A most wonderful jar, with phenomenal visual history evidenced by the extensive ethnographic wear from decades of daily use.

Provenance: from the collection of a Denver, Colorado resident

References and Recommended Reading:

- Identifying Laguna Pueblo Pottery, circa 1900 by Dwight P. Lanmon.

- American Indian Art Magazine, Summer 2007. Vol 32, No 3. pp 70-77.