A Large Laguna Polychrome Jar

circa 1895, with an encircling groove beneath flaring walls, high shoulder and tapering neck, painted in orange and dark brown against a white slip, with a motif of stepped lozenges enclosing diamond elements, accented with very fine hatching and cross-hatching, the concave base painted with an unusual openwork medallion.

For related examples and a discussion of Laguna pottery please see Larry Frank and Francis H. Harlow, Historic Pottery of the Pueblo Indians, 1600 – 1880, 1974, p 133 – 135, figs. 136 – 140, p.123: ”Laguna, founded about 1700, followed so closely the Acoma pottery tradition that vessels made prior to 1830 are difficult to ascribe to the correct village. Acomita Polychrome is a type common to both pueblos. But while McCartys Polychrome was evolving at Acoma, the Laguna wares were turning into Laguna Polychrome (1830 – 1930). Laguna Polychrome jars retain more of the Acomita Polychrome traits than do the contemporary jars from Acoma…The imprint left by Laguna Polychrome at its colorful zenith in the late nineteenth century is… impressive and important, as demonstrated by the large Stevenson collections in the United States National Museum.”

 

Also see Francis H. Harlow, Two Hundred Years of Historic Pueblo Pottery: The Gallegos Collection, 1990, plates 32 – 37: “Laguna Pueblo was founded circa 1700 during the resettlement period following the great revolt against the Spanish and the reconquest in 1692. For over a century the pottery styles are quite close to those of neighboring Acoma Pueblo, and the same type names are used for ceramics from both villages, but by 1830 there is sufficient stylistic differentiation to warrant separate names – McCartys Polychrome from Acoma and Laguna Polychrome.

 

Even then, and continuing though the nineteenth century, some vessels defy positive attribution to one or the other of the villages. Clues are furnished by several features, with Laguna pots usually heavier, having more sand in the temper, constructed with a slight angular flexure at the top of the underbody (on jars), a more lavish use of red in interconnected design elements, more red extending further down into the interior of the jar, rare red banding, duller slip with stone polishing marks, a more splotchy orange-red color for the underbody, and designs suggesting close ties with Santa Ana Pueblo. But these are not invariable attributes, and some of them also occur at Acoma, so that pending a more precise mineralogical technique for differentiation it sometimes will be impossible to make a positive identification of the village of origin.”

 

Also see Rick Dillingham, Acoma and Laguna Pottery, 1992, pp.13 - 14, figs. 1.8 – 1.9; p. 33, fig. 2.9; p. 71, fig. 4.5; p. 79, fig. 4.10; p. 81, fig. 4.12.