Featured Acoma Pottery

Just sharing this small collection of Acoma pottery I recently bought for a good price.

The bottoms are priced at 50 cents, 30 cents and $1.20.... Based on the designs, the lack of signatures, the patina and those prices, one can guesstimate that they're old. Two have hand-written notes in them saying "made in 1920's". Maybe. I'd put them between then and 1950.

Anyway, hope you enjoy!

 

Very nice, Potts!
The largest, with J. Leute signature, may be traceable to a given period.
I like the one on the left, most...Thanks!

 

Very nice.

 

Nice find Potts.Goofy beginners question, but is it tough to differentiate between a $200 and 2K Acoma Pot ? Are there steps of analysis a piece goes through ?

 

Age is key. Famous names, of course. And the fineness of the piece: is the shape symmetrical, graceful, and traditional (or experimental). Is the painting fine, balanced, steady, and evenly distributed? Painting on a curved surface is hard! Sometimes pieces have 3, sometimes 4, sections rotating around the pot. Is each one spaced evenly and painted the same as the others? In the case of Acoma pots, they're famously thin. How thin is it and is it uniform throughout? These are all signs of a great one vs good ones.

 

Jumped on Ebay and found these two 2 pots to compare-top ones offered at $2799 (Dated 1910),lower ones offered at $19,800 (Dated 1900).
Obviously a difference in the quality of pot form and decoration.
The pot painting btw yours and the 1910 piece doesn't seem hugely different, but thats to my untrained eye.The probable main difference is perhaps age ?

 

Interesting. I'd need more evidence to trust the dates listed for either one. I wouldn't think either is as old as that.

Both of them look to me to be pots made for the tourist trade-- to sell to white people. 19th C ones, made for actual utilitarian use, can hit that 20K mark at auction.

 

Here's a couple pics of another one that shows the 4 panels or sections, and how two different ones echo each other but also have differences.

 

It also seems like the majority of 19th museum examples invariably have bashed rims,heat & fire signs & rarely are as perfectly painted as the 19K example above.
I don't think I'd expect (or want) to see Qianlong perfection in an early Acoma pot.
PS-Is the example above pre-tourist ?

 

It appears that you have a possible problem here. First, that there is no potter listed with the surname "Leute," in either the Hayes book, or in Gregory Schaaf's Southern Pueblo Pottery, 2000 Artist Biographies. It appears to be "Lente," instead.

There is a "Marquis Lente" pictured in Southwestern Pottery, Anasazi to Zuni, but he's contemporary, and with the wrong first name.
In the late 19th century, a number of Laguna potters moved to Isleta, taking their pottery techniques with them. Schaff lists 5 potters, with that last name, including a "Joe Lente," but unfortunately no further information. However, they would all be signed "Isleta," or at least be made with the distinctive style that they were known for, which ended during the Depression.

Since this pot is signed, and potter's individual signatures at Acoma first were done in the 1950s, and it is the style associated with Acoma pottery, I would think that a buyer probably added the "signature" later. Which could only be determined by "hands on" examination to determine if the signature is made with the same pigment used to decorate the pot.

Tourism, and the resulting "tourist pots," date to the coming of the railroad near Acoma in the 1880s-1890s. By the 1920s making pottery was the leading source of income, and keeping the practice alive.

 

I might add that pottery from the 1960s to the 1970s can fairly easily be identified by the fact that impurities began to appear in Acoma clay, resulting in "pop-outs" found on the pot in question, at the lower right of the neck, just above where the black decoration appears.

And the resulting pitting could appear long after the pot was sold. It resulted in many potters switching over to buying commercial greenware for their pots. But some, like Lucy Lewis and Marie Chino, didn't resort to that extent. But if you see pits, it's pretty sure it was from that time period.

 

Yes, I do think that both the name and location were added later. They don't have that sorta flat black tone to them that I see on Acoma pots. This writing is too 'deep' and newer-seeming.

For what it's worth, I neither do nor will make any claims re: attribution. I'll try to sell this piece at the antique mall as 'Acoma pottery.'

Thank you for your always valued comments.