San Ildefonso Green and Red Slip Sgraffito Jar [SOLD]

Russell Sanchez is recognized as one of the major innovators of pueblo pottery and quite possibly the finest potter of this style living today.  His restless imagination is a key to his success in creating a never-ending variety of work.  He is not an artist who repeats the same shape and style over and over but an artist whose imagination pours forth with new ideas—ideas, Russell says, that are determined by the clay.  The start of every pottery vessel is in his hands but the outcome is dictated by what direction the clay takes.  Mother Earth is his collaborator.

This jar is one of Russell’s earlier works. It is dated 1992.  The entire jar, except for the medallion on front, is covered in green slip.  The medallion and the green-slip portion of the jar are separated by a row of brown hieshe inserted into the clay.  The medallion has three flowers and the heads of two hummingbirds whose bodies are incised into the green slip.  That was a clever way to present the hummingbirds.

Condition: near original condition

Recommended Reading: Art of Clay: Timeless Pottery of the Southwest by Lee M. Cohen

Provenance: from the collection of a family from Illinois