LuAnn Tafoya, spsc2k110: Black jar with carved design

$4,750.00

A black jar carved with a geometric design around the shoulder

In stock

SKU: spsc2k110 Category: Tags: , ,
Tafoya, LuAnn
Dimensions 7.75 × 7.75 × 7.5 in
Condition of Piece

Very good, light rubbing on bottom
Signature

LuAnn Tafoya Santa Clara Pue. N.M.

Brand

Tafoya, LuAnn

"People want to have your pots because of how you feel when you make your pots."

LuAnn Tafoya was born into Santa Clara Pueblo, the daughter of Margaret Tafoya and granddaughter of Sara Fina Tafoya, LuAnn grew up learning how to make pottery from masters of the traditional craft. She began producing pottery in her late teens and the list of awards she has earned since then is very long.

LuAnn has participated in juried competitions at the Santa Fe Indian Market, Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market, Gallup Intertribal Ceremonial and the Eight Northern Pueblos Arts & Crafts Show, earning awards almost every year since 1980. In 2003 she became only the second potter ever to earn both the Blue Ribbons for Best of Pottery and Best of Show at Santa Fe Indian Market.

Like her famous mother and grandmother, LuAnn specializes in larger pieces: red, black and brown, highly polished and exquisitely carved. She is also a master of the outdoor firing process.

Everything about the building, carving and firing of a large piece is different. The clay mix needs more temper, the building of the pot takes more time as it sometimes requires that a coil be allowed to dry some before the next coil is added. Polishing is a more drawn out process, as is carving. And then comes the most dangerous part of the process: the final firing. LuAnn has mastered them all.

LuAnn also learned to make pottery in the San Juan style (San Juan/Ohkay Owingeh has a very distinctive traditional style) and has earned awards for some of those pieces, too.

LuAnn has been a featured artist in books and exhibitions like The Legacy of Generations, Fourteen Families in Pueblo Pottery and Margaret Tafoya: A Tewa Potter's Heritage & Legacy. Some of her work is on display at the Heard Museum of American Indian Art & History in Phoenix, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, the Cincinnati Museum of Fine Art, and at the Poeh Museum in Pojoaque, New Mexico.

LuAnn has made almost every traditional Santa Clara and San Juan pottery form. Her favorite designs to decorate with include bear paws, the avanyu, clouds, birds, kiva steps, winds and gourds.

Some Awards earned by LuAnn

  • 2004 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class. II - Pottery, Div. B - Traditional pottery, undecorated, plain polished black, red, or white, including bear paw & melon design, Best of Division; - Cat. 901 - Jars, including wedding jars, First Place; - Div. C - Traditional pottery, carved or incised in style of San Juan, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Cat. 1001 - Jars, Second Place; - Cat. 1006 - Miscellaneous (can include vases, pitchers, ladles, canteens, boxes, plates, etc.), Second Place
  • 2003 Santa Fe Indian Market. Best of Show - Class. II - Pottery, Best of Classification; - Div. B - Traditional pottery, undecorated, plain polished black, red, or white, including bear paw or melon designs, Cat. 902 - Bowls, Third Place; - Div. C - Traditional pottery, carved or incised in style of San Juan, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Best of Division; - Cat. 1001 - Jars, First Place
  • 2001 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class. II - Pottery, Pottery, Div. C - Traditional pottery, carved or incised in style of San Juan, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Cat. 1001 - Jars, Second Place
  • 2000 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class. II - Pottery, Div. B - Traditional pottery, undecorated, plain polished black, red, or white, including bear paw & melon design, Cat. 902 - Jars (over 9" tall), First Place; - Class. II - Pottery, Div. B - Traditional pottery, undecorated, plain polished black, red, or white, including bear paw & melon design, Cat. 902 - Jars (over 7" tall), Second Place
  • 1998 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class. II - Pottery, Div. B - Traditional pottery, undecorated, plain polished black, red, or white, including bear paw & melon design, Cat. 902 - Jars (over 9" tall), Third Place; - Cat. 905 - Other bowls, Third Place; - Div. C - Traditional pottery, carved or incised, Cat. 1002 - Jars (up to 7" tall), Honorable Mention
  • 1997 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class. II - Pottery, Div. C - Traditional pottery, carved or incised, Cat. 1002 - Jars (over 7" tall), Third Place
  • 1996 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class. II - Pottery, Div. B - Traditional pottery, undecorated, plain polished black, red, or white, including bear paw & melon design, Cat. 904, Melon bowls & jars, all other, Third Place; - Div. C - Traditional pottery, carved or incised, Cat. 1002 - Jars (over 7" tall), Third Place; - Cat. 1006 - Wedding vases, First Place
  • 1995 Santa Fe Indian Market. Mela Youngblood Memorial Award for Excellence in Santa Clara Pottery from Class. II, Div. B or D; - Class. II - Pottery, Div. B - Traditional pottery, undecorated, Cat. 902 - Jars (over 9 inches tall), Second Place; - Div. D - Traditional pottery, carved, Cat. 1102 - Jars (over 7 inches tall), First Place; - Cat. 1106 - Wedding vases, Second Place
  • 1994 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class. II - Pottery, Div. E - Traditional pottery, painted designs on burnished black or red surface; Cat. 1206 - Plates, Second Place
  • 1993 Santa Fe Indian Market. Mela Youngblood Memorial Award for Excellence in Santa Clara Pottery from Class. II, Div. B or D; - Class. II - Pottery, Div. B - Traditional pottery, undecorated, Cat. 904 - Melon bowls and jars, all other, First Place; - Jars (over 8" tall); Div. D - Traditional pottery, carved, Best of Division; - Cat. 1102 - Jars (over 8" tall), Second Place
  • 1992 Santa Fe Indian Market. Mela Youngblood Memorial Award for Excellence in Santa Clara Pottery from Class. II, Div. B or D; Class. II - Pottery, Div. B - Traditional pottery, undecorated, Cat. 902 - Jars (over 8" tall), First Place; - Div. C - Traditional pottery, incised in the style of San Juan, Best of Division; - Div. D - Traditional pottery, carved, Best of Division; - Cat. 1102 - Jars (over 8" tall), First Place, Third Place
  • 1991 Santa Fe Indian Market. Mela Youngblood Memorial Award for Excellence in Santa Clara Pottery from Class. II, Div. B or D; - Class. II - Pottery, Div. B - Traditional pottery, undecorated, Cat. 901 - Jars (to 8 inches), Second Place; - Cat. 902 - Jars (over 8 inches), Third Place; - Div. D - Traditional pottery, carved, Best of Division; - Cat. 1102 - Jars (over 8 inches), First Place; - Cat. 1105 - Wedding vases - First Place
  • 1990 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class. II - Pottery, Div. B - Traditional pottery, undecorated, Cat. 802 - Jars (over 8"), First Place; - Div. C - Traditional pottery, incised (in the style of San Juan), Best of Division; - Div. D - Traditional pottery, carved, Cat. 1002 - Jars (over 8"), First Place, Second Place
  • 1989 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class. II - Pottery, Div. B - Traditional pottery, undecorated, Cat. 802 - Jars (over 8" tall), Second Place; - Cat. 805 - Other bowls, Third Place; - Div. C - Traditional pottery, incised (in the style of San Juan), Best of Division; - Div. D - Traditional pottery, carved, Best of Division; - Cat. 1002 - Jars (over 8" tall), First Place
  • 1986 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class. II - Pottery, Div. B - Traditional pottery, undecorated, Cat. 802 - Jars (over 8" tall), Second Place; - Cat. 804 - Other bowls, First Place; - Div. D - Traditional pottery, carved, Cat. 1002 - Jars (over 8" tall), Third Place
  • 1985 Santa Fe Indian Market. Jack Hoover Memorial Award for Excellence in Santa Clara Pottery
  • 1984 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class. II - Pottery, Div. B - Traditional pottery, undecorated, Cat. 801 - Jars (up to 8 inches), Second Place
  • 1983 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class. II - Pottery, Div. B - Traditional, undecorated, Second Place; - Div. D - Traditional, carved, First Place, Second Place

A Short History of Santa Clara Pueblo

A stacked-stone building on the side of a cliff marked with the holes of former roof beams in ancient Puye, a ruin of the Santa Clara people
Ancient cliff dwellings at Puyé

Santa Clara Pueblo straddles the Rio Grande about 25 miles north of Santa Fe. Of all the pueblos, Santa Clara has the largest number of potters.

The ancestral roots of the Santa Clara people have been traced to ancient pueblos in the Mesa Verde region in southwestern Colorado. When the weather in that area began to get dry between about 1100 and 1300 CE, some of the people migrated to the Chama River Valley and constructed Poshuouinge (about 3 miles south of what is now Abiquiu on the edge of the mesa above the Chama River). Eventually reaching two and three stories high with up to 700 rooms on the ground floor, Poshuouinge was inhabited from about 1375 CE to about 1475 CE.

Drought then again forced the people to move. One group of the people went to the area of Puyé (along Santa Clara Canyon, cut into the eastern slopes of the Pajarito Plateau of the Jemez Mountains). Another group went south of there to what we now call Tsankawi. A third group went a bit to the north, following the Rio Chama down to where it met the Rio Grande and founded Ohkay Owingeh on the northwest side of that confluence.

Beginning around 1580, another drought forced the residents of the Puyé area to relocate closer to the Rio Grande. There, near the point where Santa Clara Creek merged into the Rio Grande, they founded what we now know as Santa Clara Pueblo. Ohkay Owingeh was to the north on the other side of the Rio Chama. That same dry spell forced the people down the hill from Tsankawi to the Rio Grande where they founded San Ildefonso Pueblo to the south of Santa Clara, on the other side of Black Mesa.

In 1598 Spanish colonists from nearby Yunqué (the seat of Spanish government near the renamed "San Juan de los Caballeros" Pueblo) brought the first missionaries to Santa Clara. That led to the first mission church being built around 1622. However, the Santa Clarans chafed under the weight of Spanish rule like the other pueblos did and were in the forefront of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. One pueblo resident, a mixed black and Tewa man named Domingo Naranjo, was one of the rebellion's ringleaders.

When Don Diego de Vargas came back to the area in 1694, he found most of the Santa Clarans were set up on top of nearby Black Mesa (with the people of San Ildefonso, Pojoaque, Tesuque and Nambé). An extended siege didn't subdue them but eventually, the two sides negotiated a treaty and the people returned to their pueblos. However, successive invasions and occupations by northern Europeans took their toll on the pueblos over the next 250 years. The Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 almost wiped them out.

Today, Santa Clara Pueblo is home to as many as 2,600 people and they comprise probably the largest per capita number of artists of any North American tribe (estimates of the number of potters run as high as 1-in-4 residents).

A display of the harvest at Santa Clara
After the harvest
Looking across Santa Clara Pueblo to the Rio Grande in 1920
The view across Santa Clara to the Rio Grande, 1920
Map showing the location of Santa Clara Pueblo reltaive to Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Gallup, New Mexico
The location of Santa Clara Pueblo
For more info:
Santa Clara Pueblo at Wikipedia
Pueblos of the Rio Grande, Daniel Gibson, ISBN-13:978-1-887896-26-9, Rio Nuevo Publishers, 2001
Upper photo courtesy of Einar Kvaran, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

About Jars

The jar is a basic utilitarian shape, a container generally for cooking food, storing grain or for carrying and storing water. The jar's outer surface is a canvas where potters have been expressing their religious visions and stories for centuries.

In Sinagua pueblos (in northern Arizona), the people made very large jars and buried them up to their openings in the floors of the hidden-most rooms in their pueblo. They kept those jars filled with water but also kept smaller jars of meat and other perishables inside those jars in the water. It's a form of refrigeration still in use among indigenous people around the world.

Where bowls tend to be low, wide and with large openings, jars tend to be more globular: taller, less wide and with smaller openings.

For a potter looking at decorating her piece, bowls are often decorated inside and out while most jars are decorated only on the outside. Jars have a natural continuity to their design surface where bowls have a natural break at the rim, effectively yielding two design surfaces on which separate or complimentary stories can be told.

Before the mid-1800s, storage jars tended to be quite large. Cooking jars and water jars varied in size depending on how many people they were designed to serve. Then came American traders with enameled metal cookware, ceramic dishes and metal eating utensils...Some pueblos embraced those traders immediately while others took several generations to let them and their innovations in. Either way, opening those doors led to the virtual collapse of utilitarian pottery-making in most pueblos by the early 1900s.

In the 1920s there was a marked shift away from the machinations of individual traders and more toward marketing Native American pottery as an artform. Maria Martinez was becoming known through her exhibitions at various major industrial fairs around the country and Nampeyo of Hano was demonstrating her art for the Fred Harvey Company at the Grand Canyon. The first few years of the Santa Fe Indian Market helped to solidify that movement and propel it forward. It took another couple generations of artists to open other venues for their art across the country and turn Native American art into the phenomenon it has become.

Today's jars are artwork, not at all for utilitarian purposes, and their shapes, sizes and decorations have evolved to reflect that shift.

About Geometric Designs

"Geometric design" is a catch-all term. Yes, we use it to denote some kind of geometric design but that can include everything from symbols, icons and designs from ancient rock art to lace and calico patterns imported by early European pioneers to geometric patterns from digital computer art. In some pueblos, the symbols and patterns denoting mountains, forest, wildlife, birds and other elements sometimes look more like computer art that has little-to-no resemblance to what we have been told they symbolize. Some are built-up layers of patterns, too, each with its own meaning.

"Checkerboard" is a geometric design but a simple black-and-white checkerboard can be interpreted as clouds or stars in the sky, a stormy night, falling rain or snow, corn in the field, kernels of corn on the cob and a host of other things. It all depends on the context it is used in, and it can have several meanings in that context at the same time. Depending on how the colored squares are filled in, various basket weave patterns can easily be made, too.

"Cuadrillos" is a term from Mata Ortiz. It denotes a checkerboard-like design using tiny squares filled in with paints to construct larger patterns.

"Kiva step" is a stepped geometric design pattern denoting a path into the spiritual dimension of the kiva. "Spiral mesa" is a similar pattern, although easily interpreted with other meanings, too. The Dineh have a similar "cloud terrace" pattern.

That said, "geometric designs" proliferated on Puebloan pottery after the Spanish, Mexican and American settlers arrived with their European-made (or influenced) fabrics and ceramics. The newcomers' dinner dishes and printed fabrics contributed much material to the pueblo potters design palette, so much and for so long that many of those imported designs and patterns are considered "traditional" now.

Margaret Tafoya Family Tree - Santa Clara Pueblo

Disclaimer: This "family tree" is a best effort on our part to determine who the potters are in this family and arrange them in a generational order. The general information available is questionable so we have tried to show each of these diagrams to living members of each family to get their input and approval, too. This diagram is subject to change should we get better info.

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