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.

Inspired by these ancient vessels and shards, Andy Ward set out to recreate this lost art form in the traditional way. While still in High School Andy began to experiment with native clays and minerals he found, forming pots by hand in the traditional coil and scrape method and firing out of doors with mesquite wood. By the time he was 21 Andy was winning awards for the pottery he was painstakingly making in the same fashion as the prehistoric pueblos. As time went by he continued to refine his art, studying the ancient shards, searching out and testing new clays and experimenting with different techniques, always staying true to the traditions of the ancients and whenever he got stuck, always returning to the shards for answers. “The materials are out there” Andy says indicating the broad expanse of desert near his home, “if there is some pottery type I can’t duplicate exactly right, I just look harder, at the shards for clues and around the desert for materials”. He has hiked literally hundreds of miles around Southeast Arizona in search of clues and materials to assist him in recreating prehistoric pottery types native to Southeast Arizona.

Palatkwapi revival pottery is built on the legacy of the prehistoric pueblo potters of Southern Arizona, no piece is an exact reproduction of a prehistoric piece but are inspired by them, the design elements come from the ancient potteries and the materials and technologies are exactly the same. All materials used are collected by hand from the local landscape, some clays are carried out miles from remote locations and many hours are spent in processing clay, grinding minerals and making paint before any pots are formed. The final product is a beautiful, one of a kind piece of art just like the ancient vessels seen in museums.

Last Saturday I hiked over 9 miles, a good deal of the way with a pack full of clay, to get what I suspect to be Bentonite clay from the Sacaton Wash area of the San Pedro Valley. I have used this clay before years ago, so I know what it’s like, but now I’m going to see how it performs with vegetal paint.



While I was out there, I climbed a small unnamed hill to look around and found a prehistoric shrine, a large pile of rocks with pottery shards associated, one was definitely Hohokam.



I also went to Phoenix this weekend to get the “volcanic ash” that the Thornburgs use for Salado polychromes. So with these two and the volcanic ash from A Mountain I collected a couple of weeks ago, I should have something that works in the next few days.

I have most of this week off so I will be working hard to get this Salado Polychrome dilemma ironed out.

I have started construction of a puddled adobe firing pit, I hate to use the word “kiln” because it has such ugly, unauthentic connotations. This is really no more than a firing pit built above ground to keep me from getting down on my hands and knees and to allow fresh air to enter from below, stay tuned for pictures.

1. An unusual amount of breakage as compared to other types because the pottery would not be as durable.
2. Occasional examples of pottery that was accidentally overfired with all or most of the design fired off.

Neither of which in my experience are true. On that account I think she is wrong about how the black paint is achieved, what she hasn’t taken into account is Bentonite clay’s absorptive properties, as a modern example look at San Ildefonso Polychrome, it is painted with vegetal paint on a Bentonite slip and they don’t have to fire at extremely low temperatures to keep from burning out the design, it is their smudged black ware that is fired at lower temperatures.

Most of the stuff you read (POTTERY AND PIGMENTS IN ARIZONA:
SALADO POLYCHROME) says that it was a kaolin type clay, but I doubt the people that write these things have ever attempted to duplicate Salado pottery. Experience has taught me that in an oxidizing firing the vegetable paint used by the Salado on a kaolin white will burn out leaving you with either gray or nothing at all. The Thornburgs have made some exceptional Salado reproductions, they use a powdered stone (not clay) from north of Phoenix that they believe to be volcanic ash. While this provides outstanding results, it has always bothered me that this type of volcanic ash outcrops are rare to non-existent in southern Arizona, I have a hard time imagining the Salado of this area traveling hundreds of miles to get their slip.



I was reading a book on the life of Maria Martinez a few weeks ago and may have found the answer. It said that the pueblos that use Bentonite Clay use vegetable based paint and those with Kaolin based clay have to use mineral based paint or the vegetable will fire out. Wow, there’s the answer, Bentonite clay is composed of weathered volcanic ash, and volcanic ash is what the Thornburgs have successfully used, there must be something about the porosity of volcanic ash that locks the paint in and doesn’t allow it to be burned out.


I have a couple of ideas I plan to try. One is to mix ground up volcanic ash with my white, kaolin based clay and see how that works. The other is that I know of a clay source about 4 miles from where I’ll be able to drive, on Sacaton Wash in the San Pedro Valley that I believe may be Bentonite clay, I am going to give that a try mixed with my kaolin white.

1. It comes from the vessel being entirely a product of the earth, absolutely everything about the pot is native, from the clay to the tempering to the paint and even the hands that form it, it is entirely “southwestern”. A child of the land it represents, conceived in the union of dry desert earth and life giving water, nurtured by the hands of a native potter and born of fire.
2. The artist is involved in all steps of production, from collecting raw materials to the firing and everything in between, therefore the final product is a reflection of the artist is the purest sense. What other art form can make that claim?

I intend to keep my pottery as true to the traditions of the ancients as is possible in this crazy, commercial world. Towards that goal I will establish and implement these rules for my pottery.

1. All materials used in the construction of my pottery will be collected in their raw, natural state from southeast Arizona.
2. All tools used directly in the construction of my pottery will be of the type that the prehistoric potters would have had available to them. For example, I make my own gourd scrapers, yucca brushes and pukis, but I also use cotton cloth that I don’t make myself, that is acceptable because the ancients had cotton cloth and often traded for it.
3. Beyond the tools used directly in forming the pots I will allow myself to use modern tools. For instance, I use a hacksaw to cut scrapers out of a gourd, I use a steel shovel to dig the clay and a pair of scissors to cut yucca leaves into lengths for paintbrushes.

You have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise I will end up carrying my clay home on my back in a burden basket!

Anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting with firing, and also with different clay sources, I should have some finished pots soon that I can put pictures of up here.