Picuris Mountains, New Mexico
Virginia Romero. Taos Pueblo Potter, ca. 1918. Photograph by Elsie Clews Parsons
The Northern Rio Grande is home to the oldest micaceous clay tradition in North America. This tradition began at around AD 1300 and continues to the present. Mining clay from high mountain deposits, potters created cook ware and serving vessels to feed their families in stunningly beautiful designs. The tradition likely began with the Tewa Pueblos (Santa Clara, San Juan, Nambe, and Tesuque), but soon spread to Taos and Picuris. Around AD 1550, the mobile Jicarilla Apaches adopted the practice and taught Spanish settlers the craft.
Felipe V. Ortega. Photo by S. Eiselt
In this way, mica pottery and the women who made it shaped the frontier economies of the Northern Rio Grande, like their descendents shape the art market economy of the American Southwest today.
My interest in ceramics intensified after my archaeologist daughter (Dr. Sunday Eiselt) invited me to study with her friend and consultant, Mr. Felipe Ortega, who is recognized as a master in the traditional micaceous pottery techniques of the Northern Rio Grande by the Smithsonian Institution. From my hilltop studio in Redding, California, where I am surrounded by mountains to the north, east and west, and the great valley to the south, I produce a limited number of pieces that reflect my own cultural background and traditional micaceous ceramics.
For more information on my mentor Felipe Orega see his web site at: http://www.felipeortega.com/
For more information on my mentor Felipe Orega see his web site at: http://www.felipeortega.com/
Micaceous clay has a limited distribution, only occurring in the high elevation peaks of the Sangre de Cristos and San Juan Mountains where it is dug from eroding sheet deposits of mica. Today, these deposits are located on public and private lands where development and mining threaten to destroy the remaining sources. Potters take only what is needed, believing that the clay represents the body of mother earth who gives to the people to perpetuate the cycle of life.
The Apaches were major producers during the historic era. Spanish colonization resulted in a reduction of mobility and loss of land among the Pueblos, but Apache women retained access to their sacred clays through mobility and with the aid of the horse. By the end of the 19th-century, they supplied thousands of households with cookware through complex barter and exchange networks with other women.
Unnamed Santa Clara Potter. Library of Congress photograph, ca. 1927
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