Bourdon, Pauline Marie

Pauline Marie Bourdon is the daughter of Birdell Bourdon of Santa Clara Pueblo. She learned how to make pottery from watching and working with her mother. She started her professional career at age 17 and still makes her pottery in the traditional hand-coiled, stone-burnished way. To make her black pieces, she fires her pieces outdoors and uses the “oxygen reduction” process (ie: smother the fire with powdered manure and let it smolder until the clay turns black).

Pauline’s favorite shapes to make are engagement baskets, wedding vases, melon bowls and animal effigies. Occasionally she’ll inlay a stone in her work.