Santa Clara and San Ildefenso pots are perhaps the most iconic of Pueblo ceramics with their striking black-on-black designs, achieved by smoking the pots in a heavily reduced atmosphere, burnishing the resulting blackware, and then overglazing designs in matte black. These sophisticated pieces were produced starting in the 1800s and predominantly by women: Maria Martinez’s pots were, and are, highly prized by modern art collectors. The two sister pueblos also produce pots characterized by deeply carved designs and redware fired in hotter, fully oxygenated kiln conditions.
The little basket above was potted by Cresencia Tafoya in the 1970s and purchased by my grandmother for my parents on a tourist trip through the northern pueblos. What you see inside is a crystallized jelly bean. My dad used to hide jellybeans around the house at Easter for us to find–color-matching them to knick-knacks, wall-hangings, and lamps so skillfully that it would often take us months to find them all. I vividly remember opening the control panel on our TV once in August to adjust the vertical hold (kids, this is how TVs used to work) and watching like 5 jellybeans from April fall out. This yellow one we found after my dad died, and I’ve kept it in there ever since.
The Rookery 