Acoma Polychrome Olla [SOLD]

A collector sees the finished product of a potter but may not know the intense work that goes into making a vessel before it reaches the finished stage. The first step is collecting clay from the family or pueblo clay beds, which remain secret from outsiders. The clay is impregnated with impurities which must be sifted out using a fine mesh wire sifter. Impurities in the clay will burn out during the firing and leave pits in the walls if not properly sifted out.

Clay is soaked for days or weeks before production of pottery. To strengthen a vessel, a tempering agent must be added to the clay. At Acoma, it is traditional to grind up old potshards found in and around the pueblo—most often ancient shards and sometimes more recently broken vessels. In this way, each Acoma vessel contains a continuing history of Acoma pottery.

Once the clay is cleaned of impurities, strengthened with temper, and soaked in water, a potter is ready to form the vessel by building up coils of clay, row by row. Drying the finished vessel, scraping the walls to make them thin, sanding them to make them smooth and applying a white clay slip to the overall vessel is all necessary before applying the final design that a collector is going to see. After the decoration is added to a vessel, then it must be fired. Traditional firing was an outdoor event. Now, some Acoma potters use commercial kilns.

Lucy Lewis was of a generation when only outdoor firing was practiced. This olla was fired in the traditional manner. The design chosen by Lewis for this jar is a rotating circular pattern resembling a whirling wind pattern.

The jar is signed Lucy M. Lewis Acoma N. Mexico and has a notation 2/$10.00 which I suppose means she was selling two of this size for a total of $10.00. If so, this must surely have been in the 1940s.