Analysis Of The Pueblo Avanyu Bowl

This bowl, which will be called Avanyu Bowl for the purposes of this paper, comes from the Santa Clara Pueblo community in present day New Mexico. This Pueblo Avanyu Bowl was created by Crescenia Tafoya, who is from a lineage of skilled pottery makers. The Avanyu Bowl is completely black, but the alterations between polished and matte black parts allowed the artist to create the images she decorated the bowl with. The inside of the Avanyu Bowl appears to be completely matte black. The decoration of the bowl is a combination of linear patterns as well as a serpent figure. It appears that the artist may have made a single thick matte line completely going around the bowl and then proceeded to create a design within that with the glossy finish.

It is a common motif in Pueblo art, representing their interpretation of “Water Serpents” which are deeply symbolic. As creatures that can survive both in land and water, they are regarded as sacred beings believed to cause thunder and lightning at the snap of their tail or tongue. Traditionally, representations of Avanyu include a horn protruding from the head of the serpent, but in the case of this Pueblo Avanyu Bowl the horn is omitted. We can still infer that it is in fact representing Avanyu though, because of the figurative lightning protruding from it’s mouth in the shape of an arrow. The curving form of the figure’s body is thought to represent flowing water, as the zig zigs protruding from the body are thought to represent

Martinez is noted to have used special polishing stones to burnish her pottery. After polishing the vessel, someone paints a design on the vessel with another layer of the liquid clay. This shows as a matte design after the vessel is fired. Typically, artists would paint the negative space with the liquid clay so that the actual figures were glossy. Before Martinez’s husband passed away in 1943, he would paint the designs onto the vessels she expertly shaped.

To make bowls such as the Avanyu Bowl, artists would use the coil technique. To make bowls this way an artist would make several long, rounded strings of clay and form them into an “O” shape. They would then proceed to stack these on top of each other and use their hands to combine the ridges of the clay circles until the inside and outside of the entire vessel were smooth. The clay that Pueblo pottery is made of is white originally, but artists get the black color by reducing some of the oxygen that the vessel is exposed to while firing in the