Santo Domingo Kewa Pueblo Pitcher with Sun Motifs

Native American, Santo Domingo (Kewa) Pueblo. A hand-built earthenware pitcher from Santo Domingo (Kewa) Pueblo, New Mexico, with a squat rounded body that rises into a tall, slender neck and a pinched pouring lip. A strap handle arcs from the rim down to the shoulder. The vessel is slipped in warm cream and painted in black. Two sun motifs with curving rays sit on either side of a plant motif on the body. Each sun spins around a small reserved ring. The neck carries a band of stacked and opposed triangles between zigzag borders, and the handle is marked with short horizontal stripes. The rim is outlined in black. The painting is quick and assured, and its bold, open designs are typical of Kewa work. The form borrows from the European ewer, a shape Pueblo potters adapted for both household use and the visitor market. Santo Domingo, which has officially taken back its Keresan name Kewa, lies on the Rio Grande between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. It has long been one of the most conservative of the Rio Grande pueblos. Its potters kept a distinctive repertoire of bold black-and-red-on-cream designs. Large flowers, birds, and heavy geometric bands dominate, while the human and sacred figures common elsewhere are largely avoided by community custom. Pitchers and ewers do not come from the older Pueblo pottery tradition. They developed from Spanish and Anglo-American tableware and from the demand for useful, portable forms after the railroad brought visitors to New Mexico. Kewa potters gave these borrowed shapes their own painted vocabulary. The sun motif with whirling rays, the plant forms, and the triangle bands seen here all belong to that vocabulary. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 206130

Estimate:£300.61

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