Rare Carved Red Bowl with Avanyu signed Marie & Julian

This carved redware pottery bowl was made by Marie & Julian Martinez of San Ildefonso Pueblo. It is signed with both names. It was likely made in the early 1930s.

Richard Spivey, author of two books on Maria Martinez and family, stated that Julian experimented with carving pottery in the Santa Clara style in the early 1930s but found it too difficult to do and much more time consuming than painting designs on pottery. He abandoned the idea. It is not known how many he did before he decided to stick with painting designs.

There is no mention in any of the books on Maria about the carved pottery, probably because it was very limited in time and quantity. There is one picture of a carved Maria and Julian jar in Spivey's latest book but nothing more about it than a short caption. That one is in the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe.

Because he did not stick with carving pottery, Julian never achieved the expertise of potters at Santa Clara Pueblo. They generally produced only carved pottery at Santa Clara, and practice certainly made their carved pottery exceptional. With Julian's innate artistic talent, he would have perfected the technique had he continued carving designs, but it was his choice to paint designs on Maria's pottery from San Ildefonso Pueblo.

Carved pottery bearing the signatures of Marie & Julian are the rarest of what they produced.

Condition: very good condition

Provenance: this Rare Carved Red Bowl with Avanyu signed Marie & Julian is from the estate of a resident of Santa Fe

Reference: The Legacy of Maria Poveka Martinez by Richard L. Spivey

TAGS: Pueblo Pottery, San Ildefonso Pueblo, Popovi Da, Santana and Adam Martinez, Julian Martinez, Maria Martinez