Unknown San Ildefonso Potter

Maria Martinez broke with Puebloan tradition when she started regularly signing her pottery in 1922. She broke tradition even further when she added her husband Julian’s name in 1926. But among all the pueblos, she was an anomaly. Until she signed her first piece, almost no San Ildefonso Pueblo pottery had ever been signed.

The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic hit all the pueblos hard. The population of San Ildefonso was reduced to less than 90 people. There was no outside help available so they were struggling to survive. Maria and Julian were just perfecting their black-on-black technique about that time and they taught it to everyone in the village who would listen. It was that effort and the following sales to tourists and traders that kept them from starving to death. It also diluted the value of Maria and Julian’s pottery as the public couldn’t recognize what was what and Maria was already developing a name for herself. Signing her pieces brought that value back, even if Maria did anglicize her name to Marie.

Seeing the value a signature brought, other potters at San Ildefonso were signing their pieces soon after. The mid 1920s was when the women who were painting for Nampeyo of Hano began signing her name to her pieces, too.