Mark Tahbo is a most enthusiastic promotor of his own work.  He works hard at making the absolutely best pottery possible and then he is proud of his accomplishments as am I.  I know of few potters today who pour their whole heart into their work like Mark does.  We do not purchase items from living artists on a regular basis as our effort is spent on acquiring and selling historic pottery and paintings.  I asked Mark over a year ago to make a large jar for me as we only had smaller ones of his.  He agreed to do so.

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Tonita Roybal was a potter, early at the beginning of the 20th century, who probably started making pottery as early as 1905 and continued until she passed away in 1945.  Her earliest documented pot is 1909, located in the Denver Art Museum.  Many collectors are not familiar with the pottery of Tonita Roybal because she passed away so early, but one dealer and collector was an all-time fan of her work.  Richard M. Howard of Santa Fe believed she was probably the finest potter at San Ildefonso in the first half of the 20th century but was overshadowed by fame bestowed on Maria Martinez.  Over a number of years, he put together a collection of perhaps a hundred pottery vessels by Tonita and his collection was displayed and sold by Nedra Matteucci Galleries in Santa Fe in 2007 just shortly before Mr. Howard passed away.

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Polacca pottery style began around 1740. It did not fully become the predominant type at Hopi until about 1800, and it continued until about 1890. Polacca wares were the predominant utilitarian wares of this time period. This small jar is covered in Polacca slip but is probably later than the 1890s.

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There is little doubt in my mind that this jar is by a member of the Nampeyo family and that member would be either Nampeyo of Hano or her oldest daughter Annie Healing.  The jar has the vessel shape of many Nampeyo jars, has the thinness of wall construction of only the finest potter, and has many design elements seen on Nampeyo-made vessels, including stippling.  The interior of the jar is stone polished and yellow in color.  If I only had the ability to perform a DNA analysis on the long black hair imbedded into the interior slip, I would know who the maker was.

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  Rick Dillingham (1952-1994) is best known for his wonderful pottery vessels that were constructed, fractured, and reassembled in the likeness of broken prehistoric pueblo pottery being discovered in excavations in the Southwest. He was fascinated with pueblo pottery, be it prehistoric, historic or contemporary.

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Nampeyo of Hano, Hopi Pueblo, was probably the finest pueblo potter of all times.  She was skilled in construction of vessels, she mastered the techniques of scraping and surface finishing, she had an artist's eye for vessel shapes and she excelled in design creation and application.  She did all of this at a time when pueblo pottery was not even considered collectible-1880 to 1910, long before Native Art was appreciated.

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Cavan Gonzales grew up around pottery and that is what he is best known for, however, earlier in his life, he produced paintings.  Cavan's mother is Barbara Gonzales, a highly respected potter.  His grandmother was Anita Martinez and his great-grandmother was Santana Martinez and, of course, his great-great-grandmother was Maria Martinez.  How could one grow up in such surroundings and not become a famous and accomplished painter and potter.

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The San Ildefonso Pueblo students were the first painters to appear and they have remained the most important of the pueblo painters to date.  The best known of these early painters are Crescencio Martinez (Táe, 1879-1918), Alfonso Roybal (Awa Tsireh, 1898-1955), Abel Sanchez (Oqwa Pi, 1899-1971), Louis (Luis) Gonzales (Wo-Peen, 1907-1990), Julian Martinez (Pocano, 1885-1943), Romando Vigil (Tse Ye Mu, 1902-1978), Richard Martinez (Opa Mu Nu, 1904-1987) and the only female, Tonita Peña (Quah Ah,1893-1949).  Wo-Peen was the youngest of the group.

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This large black jar is inscribed throughout with beautiful imagery of American Bison.  One image is of two large bulls facing each other as if fighting for control of the herd of females.  Other images are bison in various locations and positions.  There is a row of 8 bison at the rim, all running in line, and a similar row near the bottom of the jar.  There are 26 bison inscribed on the jar.

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As early as high school Hal Penrod won awards for his drawings. Later in life he drove trucks all over the western US and that is when he began using oils to paint and focus on putting the various landscapes of the west on canvas. His favorite subject was the deserts of the southwest including Indians and the old west lifestyle. He was especially noted for the skies featured in his paintings.

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This painting is the work of an artist from Taos, New Mexico, named Art Jacobson who completed it in 1951.  It is an oil on canvas painting of absolutely superb quality and it is a painting of Taos Pueblo Koshare, but it appears to represent spiritual Koshare rather than human impersonators.  The three Koshare are ghost-like in appearance, spiritual in presentation, and appear almost in cloud form.  The landscape surrounding them is mystical as well, appearing as a green haze in which the banner carrier is concealed in the haze with only the top of the banner pole visible.  The sky is black.

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Jan Loco is a member of the Warm Springs Apache tribe.  She began making jewelry in 1988. She has developed a method of making jewelry without the use of hand tools. After cutting the silver to the desired shape (with heavy-duty poultry scissors or something similar), she hammers it with a specially selected rock until she achieves the texture she desires. This is a laborious task, but she feels it honors her ancestry to use items of nature rather than power tools.

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Most paintings by Beatien Yazz reflect the everyday lives of the Navajo. He has always been a master of detail; painting the special nuances that make reservation life unique. In the instance of this painting he is showing the innocence of youth. The young boy is dressed in traditional Navajo style, including moccasins and a headband. He appears to be enjoying the outdoors while daydreaming.

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The Zuni Knifewing is a symbol associated with the sky. It is a supernatural being in bird form that is very significant for the Zuni people. For public use, its design was probably altered in order not to offend traditional Zuni people.  It is a very popular design motif used in Zuni jewelry beginning as early as the 1930s.

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The buckle is stamped with a capital letter W or M within what appears to be a horseshoe symbol with the letter B on its side.  I have been unable to identify to whom this hallmark belongs.  The buckle is also stamped STERLING SILVER.  This Southwest Indian Jewerly buckle is designed in the manner of a traditional concha belt with outward rays in repoussé form and a raised diamond in the center.  The artist's hallmark is stamped on the back of the diamond.  There is stamping around the outer edges of the buckle.

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Tom Knapp casts his own bronzes in the backyard of his studio, as part of a neighborhood "Pour In" that has been described in New Mexico Magazine. His series of contemporary American Indian ceremonial dancers was featured in Art West, which quoted Knapp as claiming that "vitality, movement, is the most important thing in sculpture, not the detail." His work is in five public collections and he is listed in Who's Who in American Art.

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Cochiti Pueblo has a long history of producing figurative pottery. It reached its prime in the last quarter of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century. There was a strong revival in the early 1970s with the production of storyteller figurines. Some potters at Cochiti expanded beyond the traditional storyteller figurines. Seferina Ortiz was one of them.

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In the decade of the 1950s, Margaret Tafoya (1904 - 2001) Maria Margarita Tafoya - Corn Blossom, with the help of her husband, Alcario, mastered the techniques of pottery production.  They had raised ten children to adulthood and numerous grandchildren too.  She had taught all of her children the techniques of pottery making.  With their children grown and self-sufficient, she could concentrate on perfecting her techniques.  She made very large storage jars-a feat most potters would not attempt.  She made most of these in the 1950s and 1960s, and then tapered off as she got older.  She then made smaller items.

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Ada Suina resumed making pottery figurines a few years ago after several years of not doing so following the death of her husband.  She relied so much on his help in digging the clay and working it to a point where she could form the figurines. Now, at age 85, she has to do everything by herself, therefore it is taking significantly more time to complete a piece. She is not very actively making pottery at this time. She was not displaying pottery at the Santa Fe Indian Market in 2015.

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Once the group of Laguna Pueblo families, who had split from their native village, settled at Isleta Pueblo in a village they named Oraibi in 1879, they began to produce a large quantity of tourist pieces of pottery, sized down in scale to make it easy for the travelers to carry in their luggage.

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