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| 023 Laguna Pueblo, c. 1800 - 1820 |
 The mixture of design, style, form, and construction materials in this bold and handsome jar proclaims the confluence of ideas from three Keres language Pueblos – Acoma, Santa Ana, and Laguna. New concepts in pottery structure and decoration were developing across the Pueblo world at this time, with exchanges occurring through numerous visits from one village to another to learn the latest trends. The basic ideas for materials had reached Laguna from Acoma a century earlier, when Laguna was being organized as a new village after the chaotic Pueblo revolt and reconquest by the Spanish. The form, with relatively tall neck and bulbous middle body, follows developments that commenced at Acoma in the late 1700's, but here we see a distinctive and persistent Laguna spin in the slightly concave contours of the underbody. The signature of Santa Ana influence shows in the decorative style of the middle body. Declaring a new degree of design innovation, the potters of Santa Ana were at that time experimenting with the depiction of relatively massive red figures devoid of fussy embellishments. The idea was popular at Laguna for a couple of decades; at Santa Ana it persisted through much of the 1800's. The prominent triangular figures with stepped sides on this jar trace their origin to at least a century and a half earlier; at Santa Ana they evolved into the “Eiffel-Tower" design that occurs for decades with only slight variations at that village. On this Laguna jar these figures join in intimate contact to circular wheels containing “propeller" blades. An unusual addition to the decoration on this jar is seen in the V-shaped figures encircling the surface of the underbody. This nearly unique occurrence on Laguna pottery finds its nearest ancestor on jars made at the Tewa-language Pueblos, a hundred miles to the northeast, during the last half of the 1500's. A more common Laguna design element occurs within the neck of this jar, and consists of pairs of large red dots around the circumference.
--Francis H. Harlow, Los Alamos |
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