Special Value Offer: Kewa Pueblo Historic Dough Bowl with Ovoid Design [SOLD]

Special Value Offer: We have been requested to reduce the price of this bowl by 40% from the current price of $5500 to $3300.

This is an extraordinarily fine Santo Domingo dough bowl that follows the pueblo's traditions in every aspect of materials, construction and design. The main body is decorated in black vegetal paint over a cream-colored rag-wiped bentonite slip. The design consists of ovoids formed by painting black guaco over the cream slip in a design leaving the undecorated areas to define the design.  The ovoids are alternating in upper and lower levels around the entire circumference of the bowl.    The lower half of the exterior is slipped in red.  The interior of the bowl was slipped in red clay but most of the red has worn away from constant use.

Santo Domingo (now Kewa) Pueblo pottery exhibits a strong and bold design concept.  The black guaco paint, when painted on the cream slip, appears almost transparent, but fires to a beautiful black.  The guaco does not perform well on other slips but finishes beautifully on this particular Kewa Pueblo native slip.  The Southwest Indian Pottery dough bowl probably dates to the 1930s decade.

Condition: very good condition with some clay abrasion to underside.

Provenance: from the collection of a gentleman from Kansas

Recommended Reading: A River Apart: The Pottery of Cochiti & Santo Domingo Pueblos by Valerie Verzuh, et al