Description

This is a beautiful lidded jar by award winning potter team Elizabeth and Marcellus Medina of Zia Pueblo. Lidded jars are very difficult to make; it takes a true master potter to make a lid that fits tightly and to keep it from warping as it is fired. Elizabeth is such a master potter, and Marcellus is an artistic painter.

This is beautiful olla jar measures 9 inches high (including lid) and 7 ½” inches in diameter at its widest part. It is decorated with stylized versions of the Zia bird, or roadrunner, along with sharply colored bands, clouds and floral arrangements. The decoration is simply elegant, arranged with a sharp eye for space along the surface of the pot. The lid is the really special part: it is footed, so it fits snugly into the neck of the jar, and the knob, is a hunting bear on four tall feet, which is painted with the same designs as the jar.  Everything is highly decorated: the dark red clay slip of the lid itself, with black, cross-hatched corn, and birds and flower forms.

Elizabeth’s pottery is traditionally made from the clay that is hand-gathered, mixed, coiled, smoothed, painted, partially stone-polished. The finished piece is traditionally pit fired outdoors. Elizabeth signs her pottery as: Elizabeth Medina, Zia.