Utilitarian

About Utensils and Utilitarian Pottery

All pottery was purely utilitarian in the distant past. Dressing pottery up and decorating it is a relatively recent development. At the same time, the people of the pueblos have made (and still make) utensils and utilitarian pottery for more than 1500 years. Some modern potters have taken it upon themselves to recreate much of the ancient styles, shapes and designs, working with the same materials now as were used back then.

Hardly any of the modern Native American pottery will survive being used for cooking or serving food for long. The lone type of traditional pottery that would survive that is micaceous pottery, and not the surface-slipped kind but the full-body micaceous clay kind. There are still many people in northern New Mexico who say beans taste best when cooked in a micaceous clay pot. That requires a full body of micaceous clay.

In ancient days, though, they didn't have much choice with pots, pans and cooking or eating utensils. Utensils were made of wood, bone and fired clay. Cooking pots and serving bowls and platters were made of fired clay. Those that survived best were made of solid, high-density micacous clay. That kind of clay is possibly the hardest kind of clay for a traditional potter to work with: it is next to impossible to grind the clay into a fine powder because of the high concentration of mica.

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