Durand, Cora
“You haven’t tasted good beans until you’ve tasted beans cooked in one of Cora’s bean pots.” – conventional Northern New Mexico wisdom.
Cora Durand was born into Picuris Pueblo in August 1902 and passed on in January 1998. She was raised by her father, Miguel Lopez, and married Roland Durand in the early 1920s. They raised four children together.
Cora worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs off and on over the years. She also worked at the Picuris Pueblo Day School, the Taos Indian Service Hospital and at Indian boarding schools in Towaoc, CO and Holbrook, AZ. Then in the mid 1950s, her husband died in a car accident and Cora returned to Picuris. At Picuris she decided that she would become a potter and worked to extend and grow the tradition of making utilitarian micaceous pottery at Picuris. She also often volunteered at the Picuris Catholic Church and was involved with the Picuris Valley Home Extension Club.
The primary clay source for Picuris potters was virtually destroyed by an industrial mica mining project in the 1950s. When Cora decided she wanted to learn to make pottery, there was hardly anyone making pottery at Picuris. So she got to know a few folks over at Taos Pueblo and picked up some really good pointers from Juanita Martinez.
Juanita was originally from Jemez Pueblo. She married a man from Taos Pueblo and moved to his home there. At Taos she continued making Jemez-style pottery but she had to reformulate everything she did so she could work with Jemez clay, Taos clay and micaceous clay together. Eventually she found a good niche for herself making storyteller figures with micaceous highlights.
Everything Cora learned from Juanita was helpful as, at Picuris, she had to source and prepare her own clays. In keeping with Picuris tradition, she made almost nothing but utilitarian pottery and she insisted that people use it. Other than fire clouds, Cora used almost no decorations. Occasionally she would add a biyo’ or other raised bit of clay on the outside of a pot but everything was slipped with micaceous clay and polished to a luster that said “Made with love at Picuris Pueblo.”
In 1974 Cora was part of a delegation of pueblo women who went to Washington, DC to meet President Richard Nixon, have lunch with his wife, Pat Nixon, and open an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute. At that time, she was one of only two Picuris potters still working.
Cora’s pottery was exhibited at the Bond House Museum and Cultural Center in 1987. Later, her pottery was featured at the Arizona State Museum’s American Indian Pottery Fair in 1994. In 1996 her work was featured in an exhibit at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, NM.
Cora started teaching her grandson, Anthony Durand, how to make pottery when he was about seven years old. Anthony went on to earn a number of awards for his pottery before he passed on in 2009.