Maria Montoya Martinez Native American Ceramic Artist

Maria Martinez is remembered today as a Native American artist who created internationally known pottery. Maria and other family members examined traditional Pueblo pottery styles and techniques to create pieces which reflect the Pueblo people’s legacy of fine artwork and crafts.

Maria Martinez Pottery Maria was from the San Ildefonso Pueblo, a community located northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Traditional pottery making techniques were being lost, but Maria and her family experimented with different techniques and helped preserve the cultural art.

Six distinct processes occur before the pot is ready to be sold: Finding and collecting the clay, forming a pot, scraping and sanding the pot to remove surface irregularities, applying the iron-bearing slip and burnishing it to a high sheen with a smooth stone, decorating the pot with another slip, and firing the pot. Firing the potteryRemoving pottery from the firing pit

Maria Martinez Pottery

Maria Martinez Black ware pottery

Black ware pottery The pot “depends on the decorative effect of the manipulation of the surface finish alone” to appear as though the decorations are scratched into the pot’s surface. -Bunzel