Navajo Tradition and Craft
Lizard Pot by Christine McHorse highlights National American Indian Heritage Month.McHorse works with coils of micaceous clay from Taos Pueblo, building her pots from the bottom up, then smoothing them with river stones and adding decorative details. Here, two wide-eyed and alert lizards suggest guardian figures, their bodies and tails encircling most of the pot's circumference. The triple-stairstep patterns that rhythmically break the continuous curve of the rim echo ancient decorative motifs in traditional Southwestern pottery and architecture. In keeping with the Navajo pottery tradition, McHorse has coated this pot with piñon pitch. She sometimes fires her pots in an outdoor pit, according to Native American tradition, but she fires thin-walled pots in an electric kiln.
Source: Tom Patterson. Contemporary Folk Art: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (New York and Washington, D.C.: Watson-Guptill Publications, in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2001).
Pictured: Christine McHorse, born 1948, Lizard Pot, about 1990, pit-fired micaceous clay with piñon pitch, 5 3/4 x 13 7/8 x 11 7/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Chuck and Jan Rosenak and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson.
Lizard Pot by Christine McHorse highlights National American Indian Heritage Month.McHorse works with coils of micaceous clay from Taos Pueblo, building her pots from the bottom up, then smoothing them with river stones and adding decorative details. Here, two wide-eyed and alert lizards suggest guardian figures, their bodies and tails encircling most of the pot's circumference. The triple-stairstep patterns that rhythmically break the continuous curve of the rim echo ancient decorative motifs in traditional Southwestern pottery and architecture. In keeping with the Navajo pottery tradition, McHorse has coated this pot with piñon pitch. She sometimes fires her pots in an outdoor pit, according to Native American tradition, but she fires thin-walled pots in an electric kiln.