Polished Blackware from Ohkay Owingeh [SOLD]

This is the traditional San Juan style jar with a polished black upper body and polished gray underbody, a style which has been made for centuries. In these jars, the red slip is wiped over the upper two-thirds of the vessel body and the lower one-third left without slip.  Both upper and lower portions are then stone polished.  When reduction fired, the red changes to black and the tan underbody changes to gray.  The interior of the neck is matte finish.  It probably dates to circa 1900-1930 period.

The arrival of the Spaniards in the late 1500s had very little effect on pottery production at the pueblos in either shape or design, but by the 1700s, there were noticeable changes.  Still later, with the opening of the Santa Fe Trail in 1821 and the arrival of the transcontinental railroad in 1880, change became inevitable at pueblos located close to the non-Indian populations.

San Juan Pueblo, now Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, stuck to its original pottery traditions of simple undecorated utilitarian wares that were so beautiful in vessel shape and simple slipped surfaces highlighted by fire clouds.  Even today, a hundred years after the pueblo abandoned its traditional style for a more modern style to appeal to tourists and collectors, the beautiful undecorated wares of the pueblo are still capturing the eyes of collectors.  Vessel shape and surface finish are the keys to the beauty of San Juan blackware.  There is no painted design to distract from the beauty of shape and sheen.  Most collectors eventually warm up to the simplicity of San Juan pottery.

Condition:  very good condition with minor rim chips

Reference and Recommended Reading: Pottery of the Pueblos of New Mexico 1700-1940 by Jonathan Batkin.  This book is currently not available from Adobe Gallery.

Provenance: from a collection from Colorado