A McCartys Polychrome Jar

circa 1875, with concave base, compressed globular body and vertical neck, with a series of pinwheel medallions above and below the shoulder, surrounded by stylized avian and foliate motifs, all surmounted by a cleaved concentric band; written on the base: "110113. Acoma N.M. Stevenson. Bur. Ethnol."

Collected by Colonel James Stevenson

Bureau of Ethnology, Washington D.C.

For related examples and a discussion of McCartys pottery please see Francis H. Harlow, Two Hundred Years of Historic Pueblo Pottery: The Gallegos Collection, 1990, plate 17: “Acoma Pueblo has been called the Queen of the pottery producing villages, with good reason. Blessed with a fine source of clay and with boundless artistic creativity, the Acoma potters have produced many thousands of the Southwest’s most beautiful ceramic creations since the founding of the village circa 1300. Thin, hard-fired vessels are the rule, with rare exception, and the decorations match the constructional quality in both their precision and their exuberance of color. While other villages are content to use black and red in their designs, the Acoma Indians have mastered the technique of multiple colors, up to six different shades of black, grey, orange and red on a single vessel. In prehistoric times they even found a process for achieving green in one of their glaze-paint techniques.

The type name, McCartys Polychrome, designates the vessels from this period, which extends from circa 1850 to nearly 1900. Design style is an important part of the criteria for the type… [including] the four-bladed “propeller”….”