Each pot is carefully crafted in the ancient tradition, no expense is spared to create a piece of artwork as timelessly beautiful as those that inspired it. Each pot produced requires hours of work collecting and processing raw materials, forming and smoothing the vessel, then decorating and finally firing.
Raw Materials
All of the materials in our pottery comes directly from the earth of Southern Arizona, clay and minerals are carefully selected and dug from various locations. Next the clay is soaked and purified while minerals are ground by hand on a metate and refined to a smooth powder to make authentic paint.
Forming
When the clay is the right consistency a small “pancake” is patted out and pushed into a “puki”, the form that will hold the bottom of the pot while the vessel is being formed. The sides of the vessel are formed by adding coils of clay and smoothing them together, then the walls are thinned and strengthened by either scraping or paddling depending on the pottery tradition being reproduced.
Decorating
A wide variety of minerals are used in decorating the pottery such as Hematite, Manganese, Chrisacola, Limonite, red, white, brown and buff clay slips, as well as mesquite sap and mesquite bean syrup. These are applied to the surface of the unfired pottery using soft cotton cloth and yucca leaf brushes. The clay slips are then polished using smooth river cobbles
Firing
When the pottery is finished and fully dried, it is stacked in a pit in the ground, then covered by broken pottery to protect it during the firing and fired using mesquite wood. This firing process results in pottery with a unique look and feel that can’t be achieved with kiln firing.
Tags: Clay, firing, Pueblo Pottery
Posted in: Pottery
