Jicarilla Apache Pottery

The Jicarilla Apaches have a long history of pottery making with some of their pots being found as far away as Kansas, Nebraska and the Black Hills of South Dakota. For hundreds of years they have gotten their clay from sacred sites in northern New Mexico, as those were the areas where Jicarilla Apache potters first learned how to make pottery. Their shapes and designs are very similar to those of Taos, and there are about the same number of Jicarilla Apache potters as there are Taos potters still working today.

At the 1994 Micaceous Pottery Symposium at the School for Advanced Research, Felix Ortiz, a Jicarilla Apache potter, advanced the idea that the Jicarilla Apaches first taught potters at Taos and Picuris how to make micaceous pottery…