Santa Clara Pueblo Globular Terrace Design Pottery Jar by Virginia Ebelacker [SOLD]

Award winning Santa Clara Pueblo artist Virginia Ebelacker fashioned beautiful blackware pottery as her famous family members. This beautifully shaped globular jar rolls inward above the design section and curves outward to a graceful neck. The widest part of the vessel body is designed with carved stepped figures, repeated four times. The jar was formed in the traditional coil method, sanded, covered in red slip and stone-polished to a beautiful burnish, then fired in a reduction outdoor firing.

Virginia Ebelacker (1925 -2001), daughter of Margaret and Alcario Tafoya, and granddaughter of Sara Fina and Geronimo Tafoya, was not a prolific potter because she had a full-time job at Los Alamos National Labs. She worked in metallography and plastics and shaped and refined metal and plastics as a profession and was honored for her scientific contributions on both mediums. After returning home to Santa Clara Pueblo in the evenings, she worked on pottery briefly until bedtime. It was only after retirement from Los Alamos in 1968 that she was able to be more productive in pottery making.

She had been a consistent award winner at the New Mexico State Fair and Santa Fe Indian Market every year since 1969. She won many first prize awards and Best of Division awards on numerous occasions. She has been published in several magazines and her pottery is included in all major collections throughout the country. Virginia was certainly deserving of the accolades cast upon her as a truly outstanding artisan. This globular jar is testimony to that. Its form and balance are extraordinary, and the burnishing produced a most striking sheen to the finished product. This is an excellent work of art.

Condition: this Santa Clara Pueblo Globular Terrace Design Pottery Jar by Virginia Ebelacker is in very good condition

Provenance: from a collection of contemporary pottery of a family from New Jersey

Recommended Reading: Fourteen Families in Pueblo Pottery by Rick Dillingham

TAGS: Margaret Tafoya, Sara Fina, Santa Clara Pueblo, pottery making, Richard Ebelacker, Jason Ebelacker, Virginia Ebelacker