Native American Pottery

Just as baskets differ from each basket maker and blankets and textile art will differ with each weaver, Native American Indian traditions in pottery are hard to be general about since each tribe has developed so differently over the years.

Simple truth, what we see as a glass or pottery art form, the beginning potter back through the ages saw as a place to store corn.

The pottery of the Southwest is quite likely the most famous with all of the amazing designs, the very distinctive types of form and shape and the beautiful wedding vases with their double spouts to signify the duality and the joining.

Likewise those same Southwestern tribes are the ones who have preserved both their actual ceramics, as well as their ceramic making heritage the most fully, presumably because they still live somewhat close to their native areas in the United States.

Across the United States, Natives were relocated forcefully to other areas, where their kind of agriculture wasn’t feasible, and their traditional materials were not available.

Native American Pottery and ceramics were made over most of the North American continent by multiple tribes who each made different types and patterns of pottery, each of them collectors items in their own right.

The Cherokee and the Seneca, the Plains, Woodland and Great Basin Natives making very distinctive pottery that was specific to their tribes.

Most Native American pottery despite differences in their patterns, their firing and their painting styles, have one thing in common which is the essential technology that they used.

Most  Native American pottery is not achieved using a potters wheel, but by coil and pinch method, which was used as far back as anyone remembers and for the most part is still used today.

If actual authentic Native American pottery is important to you, perhaps because of your own heritage,  then  you will want to find the authentic sites of Native potters online, or to browse the tribal sites, many of which will feature native American arts.

One of my personal favorites is Zuni pottery and a particular favorite artist is Zuni Potter Agnes Peynetsa, whose natural colors and fine detail is literally amazing.

If you’re in the market for some superb Native American pottery, check out the potters that are available to you at www.indiansummer.com.