Teresita Naranjo Tall Blackware Jar with Bear Paws

This carved blackware jar was made by Teresita Naranjo of Santa Clara Pueblo. Naranjo was a gifted potter who worked most frequently in the traditional carved red and blackware styles. She created a variety of forms and was notably successful with larger pieces, which are especially challenging to execute.

With this piece, Naranjo offered a jar that is impressive by any measure. From any angle, the vessel form is stylish and beautiful. It is over a foot tall, with a gentle shoulder giving way to a slim neck and a slightly flared rim.

Naranjo enhanced the beauty of the vessel with carved and impressed designs. Four bear paws appear, equidistant from one another around the jar's widest point. A carved band appears just above the bear paws, sending vertical lines, slim triangular forms, and inverted U shapes up and down into the clay, which results in feather designs up above and semicircular and triangular forms down below. This is inventive work, and it was executed with remarkable precision and admirable style.

The bottom of the jar is signed Teresita Naranjo, ‘Apple Blossom,' Santa Clara Pueblo.

Teresita Tafoya Naranjo (1919-1999) Apple Blossom - Bay-Po-Vi has been acknowledged as one of the finest 20th century potters at Santa Clara Pueblo. She was born in 1919 and passed away on January 2, 1999, at her home at Santa Clara Pueblo. Her unexpected death was a loss to all pottery collectors. Naranjo was the daughter of Victor and Christina Naranjo and wife of Joe Naranjo, mother to Stella Tafoya Chavarria, niece to Margaret Tafoya, and the granddaughter of Sara Fina Tafoya. After her husband's passing in 1950, she supported her family solely through sales of her pottery. She was a master potter—one of the finest of her pueblo—and was active from 1935 to 1999. She was known for her intricately carved blackware and redware in the Santa Clara style.

Condition: very good condition, a few light abrasions on lower section

Provenance: this Teresita Naranjo Tall Blackware Jar with Bear Paws is from the estate of a family from Albuquerque

Recommended Reading: Santa Clara Pottery Today by Betty LeFree, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1975

TAGS: Santa Clara Pueblo, Christina Naranjo, Stella Tafoya Chavarria, Margaret Tafoya, Sara Fina Tafoya, Pueblo Pottery, Teresita Naranjo