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.

While the Hopi have legends of “The Red City”; Palatkwapi, that was abandoned, and pueblo ruins can be found all across Southeast Arizona, no one knows exactly why this area was abandoned. The fact is that in 1400 this area contained many thriving pueblos that were vibrant with trade and craft production, representing several different local cultures, but by the time Coronado arrived here in 1540 it was all gone. Something happened and the Palatkwapi Pueblos were abandoned, their inhabitants moved on, no doubt many went to the north to live with the Hopi and Zuni as the legends relate, possibly some went to the south or east, but wherever they went, their way of life changed when they left here and the pottery types they had made for hundreds of years ceased to be made.

In prehistoric times Southern Arizona was a crossroads of many different cultures, Andy Ward represents several of them to some extent through his pottery. The cultures represented in Palatkwapi Revival pottery are:

• Salado
• Hohokam
• Mogollon

Salado

Arriving in this area around 1300 from the north, the Salado lived in pueblo compounds, usually of adobe, and are famous for their fine polychrome potteries and weavings. Andy reproduces several varieties of Saladoan wares including Gila, Tonto and Tucson Polychromes.

Hohokam

Hohokam culture began to appear in this area around 100 AD and flourished here until around 1400 when it mysteriously disappeared. They were well known for their irrigation systems that were among the most elaborate in the world at that time. The pottery produced by the Hohokam was usually red on buff or red on brown and often including figures of lizards and birds. In the far Southern Arizona they made a unique type of pottery called Bobocomari Polychrome with red and black designs on white, mica flecked clay.

Mogollon

The Mogollon were some of the original inhabitants of this area and some of the first to produce pottery in the Southwest. The pottery they produced in Southeast Arizona was usually simple red on brown and some red on white, but their geometric designs are striking.

Palatkwapi revival pottery is true in every way to the legacy of these ancient cultures, it is among the most traditional of any southwest pottery being made today. All tools and materials used in the construction of the pottery are exactly like those used in prehistoric times.

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.

I don’t begrudge them their success, and I definitely have to hand it to Spencer MacCallum and whoever else is responsible for marketing them. I just don’t understand how they can be more famous or popular than Acoma or Hopi pottery, it just doesn’t make sense to me.

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.

Traditional southwest pottery is obviously pottery that is inspired in some sense by the prehistoric cultures that flourished here centuries ago, and therefore would include similar construction techniques and design elements. In my opinion part of the beauty of southwestern pottery is that it is made entirely from local materials, it is wholly a product of the land it represents. The construction of southwest pottery has always been hand made using various methods (paddle and anvil, coil and scrape or even pinch pots) but never thrown on a wheel, slipcast or any other method not used by the ancients. The final distinguishing characteristic is the design on the pots surface, allowing for a wide range of artistic expression, the design is always based, however loosely, on those of the potters who went before us.



This is how I would describe traditional southwestern pottery, there are many fine potters working in the southwest making beautiful pieces using other techniques and I don’t mean to take anything away from them. There are potters out there however who are not making pottery in the traditional ways but are marketing it as such, this is dishonest and not fair to unsuspecting and uninformed consumers who think they are getting the real deal.



In this book I have been reading, it talks about some potters in Mata Ortiz using “commercial clays” and even toner cartridges in the making of vessels, and many of the designs are, in my opinion, moving too far away from the Casas Grandes tradition. Not that there is anything wrong with that per se, just that these should not be marketed as traditional southwest pottery, such wares belong in the store next to the fine Oaxacan pottery, not in the Indian arts stores. I believe the same is true of the Acoma potters who sell slipcast pottery or any other artist who will break with tradition in the name of sales or artistic expression, there needs to be some integrity involved here.



I should be firing a few vessels this weekend if the weather doesn’t get in the way, hopefully I will be able to post some pictures here next week.