Object Monday: Santa Clara Pueblo Fish Figurine

Object: 88.9.4
Artists: Margaret Gutierrez and Luther Gutierrez
Date: ca. 1970
Culture: Santa Clara Pueblo (Kha'p'oo Owinge)
Collection: Ethnology

 This sculptural ceramic fish figurine was created by Santa Clara sibling artists Margaret and Luther Gutierrez. Although Santa Clara is probably most known for polished black pottery, Margaret and Luther use a polychrome style which was first introduced in Santa Clara pottery by their parents, Lela and Van Gutierrez. Santa Clara Pueblo has a rich legacy of pottery making and continues to be a home to a vibrant community of potters.

Margaret built and formed the shape of this figurine and her brother, Luther, created the painted decoration. This buff-colored fish with red, white, and gray painted designs is typical of their use of pigments that produce natural colors in their pottery. In the 1970s Margaret and Luther began creating polychrome “animalitos” or caricatures of animals and other smaller figurines. This piece is an example of that period.

 “By the time I was twelve years old my mother had me making pottery… With all this knowledge that was handed down to us from generation to generation, today our pottery is the finest and most beautifully worked pottery in the world… Our pottery is all hand-made from the beginning; there is no commercial product used. This is all from Mother Nature.” - Margaret Gutierrez (from Seven Families in Pueblo Pottery)

Post by Lauren Fuka and Lea McChesney

Further Reading:

Seven Families in Pueblo Pottery. University of New Mexico Press, 1975, Dillingham, Rick. Fourteen Families in Pueblo Pottery. 1^st ed., University of New Mexico Press, 1994.LeFree, Betty. Santa Clara Pottery Today. 1^st ed., University of New Mexico Press, 1975.