Book traces 1,000-year-old tradition of Zuni coiled pots
In 1890, about 900 Zuni Pueblo women coiled pottery from local clay, painted it with yucca leaves using natural pigments and fired it in a traditional dung-fueled oven.
By 1930, about 15 potters were left. Today, 35 artists still make these distinctive bowls and jars with roots dating back 1,000 years.
Dwight Lanmon and Francis Harlow have documented this historic decline and revival in “The Pottery of Zuni Pueblo,” (Museum of New Mexico Press), a 600-page doorstop of a book packed with 1,200 photographs of Zuni artists and their work. Lanmon will give a slide talk and book signing at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian on Museum Hill on Sunday.
The former director and curator of both the Winterthur Museum in Delaware and New York’s Corning Museum of Glass, Lanmon has collected pueblo pottery for 20 years.
Although Zuni lacks the instant pottery-producing associations of San Ildefonso and Santa Clara pueblos, its size makes it one of the most productive, Lanmon said. When Smithsonian Institution researchers embarked on a collecting expedition to Zuni in 1879, they returned with more than 5,000 pieces. Zuni was the first pueblo the Spanish encountered when they drove into New Mexico in 1539; Coronado stormed the pueblo in 1540. Survivors thought it was one of the Seven Cities of Cibola and told stories about residents dining from gold dishes. In all likelihood, those gold dishes were decorated yellow pottery.
However prolific its potters, Zuni was isolated from its northern neighbors.
“It isn’t on the tourist route,” Lanmon said. “It’s easier to reach the Rio Grande Pueblos.”
Distinguished by its red and black designs on white, Zuni pottery blooms with characteristic designs, including the familiar deer with the heart line.
“I think it’s original to Zuni and then it was copied by the potters at Acoma,” Lanmon said. “I don’t know the true significance. You have an agrarian society that does depend on hunting. One hunter said, ‘When I kill a deer, I inhale its last breath to breathe in its spirit.’ ’’
Feathers, steps, clouds, arrowheads and rain birds or spirals swirl around the thinly coiled walls.
Until 1680, the Zunis glazed their pottery using lead — a process most likely dropped because the Spanish controlled the lead mines.
“They never made waterproof pottery,” Lanmon said. “The walls are porous so that it evaporates and cools what’s left. They say water in a glazed jar becomes stale and you can’t drink it.”
Since the 1800s, Zuni has produced a series of innovators, beginning with We’Wha, a man who lived and dressed as a woman. His work commanded two to three times that of lesser-known potters.
“He was a man who chose to do women’s work,” Lanmon explained. “They’re beautifully painted, beautifully potted with very elaborate designs.”
A woman called Tsayutitsa helped keep the art form alive during the ’20s and ’30s.
“She became sort of a serious professional potter to sell to the tourists and other potters,” Lanmon said. “She also made the largest ever pieces done at Zuni.” Some of her pieces stand as high as 2 feet.
Like all the pueblo people, the Zunis initially made pottery from necessity. By the 1930s, they could buy all the bowls and jars they needed from traders. Realizing they were watching what could have been the death knell for Zuni pottery, a group of private investors formed the Indian Arts Fund to prevent the remaining pots from landing in East Coast museums. That fund, coupled with the Santa Fe Indian Market, helped stimulate new pottery production. Determined to keep the art form from disappearing, experienced potters began teaching in the schools.
Since those early revival days, the Nahohai family has grown into a pottery dynasty of sorts. The Southwestern Association for Indian Arts gave the late Josephine Nahohai its lifetime achievement award in 2005. Two of her sons are potters.
The great-granddaughter of master Zuni potter Catalina Zunie, Eileen Yatsattie founded the Creative Arts of Zuni program, where she taught traditional pottery-making methods. Examples of her work are in the Heard Museum in Phoenix.
Noreen Simplicio learned pottery in high school, where she also taught. Today, her work is displayed in both the Smithsonian and the Heard. Just 14, her son Kenneth Epaloose is continuing the family tradition.
Whenever Lanmon visits the pueblo, he encourages its youngest members to make pottery. He’s still afraid this 1,000-year-old art form could disappear like the pueblo’s Anasazi ancestors.
The kids “say, ‘Yes, but it’s so hard,’ ’’ he explained. “There are lots of losses during the firing. The kids say, ‘I can make more money flipping burgers.’ ’’
