Acoma Pueblo Historic Polychrome Pottery Water Canteen [SOLD]

Pueblo pottery canteens such as this Acoma example were essential to the survival of the men when tending their crops in the arid desert of the American Southwest.  A canteen of this size would provide sufficient water to sustain a man while in the fields. The body of the canteen was decorated with rain symbols, particularly clouds and rain.  Such symbolism would insure that the canteen was never without water.

Water is essential to life of humans and plants.  In the American Southwest, water is scarce and the indigenous peoples of the area have ceremonies pleading for rain, women decorate pottery with rain symbols, dancers wear stepped tabletas representing clouds, dance costumes feature rain symbols, Katsina masks have symbols representing rain, and drums simulate thunder, all in petition to the spirits to provide rain.

“Paintings, textiles, pottery, baskets, sculpture, katsinas, musical instruments, jewelry, and other artifacts and art objects express in form, decoration or function some aspect of the desert tribes’ intimate relationship to the primal power of life-giving life-sustaining rain.” [Marshall, 2000]

The bulbous body of the canteen was decorated in a hemisphere design with four panels which contain two separate designs, each repeated, that may be interpreted as coulds and rain.  Around the outer circle of the design is a continuous series of rain clouds, connected as in a chain. The back side of the canteen was painted with red slip and outlined with black pigment in the shape of dark clouds.  

A fabric wrapped wire was fashioned as a handle by which to hang the canteen.  A corn cob remnant serves as a stopper. The underside of the canteen is slightly concave and the canteen sits firmly in an upright position.  

Condition: this Acoma Pueblo Historic Polychrome Pottery Water Canteen very good condition with normal wear from use.

Provenance: from the estate of Tom Dickerson, a former Santa Fe resident and artist who just recently passed away.

Recommended Reading: Marshall, Ann. Rain - Native Expressions From the American Southwest, Heard Museum, Phoenix

Relative Links: Southwest Indian Pottery, Acoma Pueblo, Historic Pottery