Mata Ortiz Hand Coiled Indian Pottery.

This pot is made from beautiful Mata Ortiz clay by hand from start to finish. This is a stunning piece of art featuring hand painted images of black running ants on the red clay. It's 11-1/2 tall, 10-1/2" wide, 42-1/2" in circumference, and has a 4-1/4" opening. It is signed by the artist Lucy Mora De Bugarini. This piece of pottery would make a beautiful addition to your collection, one to be proud of. In recent years, Mata Ortiz pottery has become highly prized by knowledgeable collectors.

Legends take pottery making back to the dawn of creation. Some perceive the world in the beginning as being first soft, like moistened clay. In a sense, this land was molded, shaped by wind, water and the forces of nature. Clay is said to come from the "body of Mother Earth" and to be "alive." Clay breathes, different clays have different feelings, qualities and strengths. Building the pot starts as coils spiral upward, one above the other. The potter squeezes them between her thumbs and fingers. This thins the coils to the thickness of the finished pot. The cracks between the coils are smoothed out as she turns the pot. As the walls rise, the potter smooths them and slopes them inward and outward.

Painting is still widely used to decorate pots in the Southwest. Potters make no measurements or sketches but paint designs free-hand. They use ground minerals and boiled plant juices, applying them with a feather or a brush of yucca.