Pino, Vicentita

“My grandmother and I used to take her water jars and my pottery houses to the Santo Domingo Pueblo Feast Day. I got $4 for my houses, when I was only 10-12 years old.”

Vicentita Pino was born to Manuelita Aguilar Salas and Jesus Salas (of Jemez Pueblo) at Zia Pueblo in 1917. Her maternal grandmother was Augustina Aguilar and that’s who Vicentita always said she learned how to make pottery from. She started with miniature pottery houses. Then when she was 15, she needed to make, paint and fire 100 serving bowls that she then needed to sell or trade for food. That’s how her career “began.”

Vicentita mostly made traditional polychrome dough bowls, storage jars, vases, canteens and miniature fireplaces and pottery houses. Her favorite designs included deer, roadrunners, hummingbirds, swallows, robins and rabbits. For years she was a regular at the Santa Fe Indian Market, the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Arts and Crafts Show, the New Mexico State Fair, the Gallup InterTribal Ceremonial and others. Her pottery was earning awards from 1934 through at least 2000. In 1974 she was one of 19 pueblo potters who made the journey to Washington DC to meet then-First Lady Pat Nixon for dinner at the White House. The pottery she gave Mrs. Nixon at that meeting is now at the National Museum of the American Indian.

Vicentita passed her knowledge and techniques on to her daughter, Diana Pino Lucero, well before she passed on in 2009.