Santa Clara Polychrome Seed Jar with Elk Designs [SOLD]

Joseph Lonewolf passed away on November 9 2014 at Santa Clara Pueblo.  Katheryn Lonewolf contacted us to see if we would be interested in the only remaining pottery seed jar that they had in their collection.  She said that Joseph loved this one so much when he finished it in 1992 that he told her not to sell it but to put it in their personal collection.  I can see why he was so impressed with it.  It is absolutely spectacular in design.  It is truly amazing that an artist could create such a scene on a round pottery ball.  Mistakes cannot be covered up on pottery as they can on canvas.  A slip of the brush is devastating when designing pottery.  Joseph was a master at his craft.

Joseph Lonewolf started a career as a mechanic and then became a trained machinist, making precision parts with fine engraving.  It was this skill that he used to transfer his talent from mechanical objects to precision-carved pottery.  In 1971, Lonewolf returned to Santa Clara Pueblo and put his skills to making pottery as had been taught to him by his mother, Agapita Silva Tafoya.  His father, Camilio Tafoya, had taken him as a child into the mountains where he witnessed petroglyphs carved into caves and on walls of cliffs.  Lonewolf took the lessons of his mother and field trips with his father and combined the two to arrive at intricately-carved designs on pottery.

If any potter mastered the technique of sgraffito pottery, it must be agreed that it was Joseph Lonewolf. He created the finest designs in sgraffito ever put on the face of a pottery vessel.  The exquisite Elk on the dome of this seed pot bears witness to his skills of carving and the layout is testament to his artistic talents. 

The pot is signed Joseph Lonewolf and has the wolf's head hallmark. It is not dated.

Condition: original condition

Provenance: from the estate of Joseph Lonewolf of Santa Clara Pueblo who passed away on November 9, 2014.

Recommended Reading: The Pottery Jewels of Joseph Lonewolf, the Dandick Company, Scottsdale, 1975.