San Ildefonso Pueblo and the Black Pottery Revival

The pueblo of San Ildefonso has stood along the Rio Grande for centuries, settled around thirteen hundred by Tewa-speaking people who moved down from the Pajarito Plateau.

But its most celebrated chapter is more recent. In the nineteen twenties, a potter named Maria Martinez and her husband Julian rediscovered a technique producing glossy black-on-black pottery that transformed both the art world and the pueblo's economy. Maria fired her pots in the traditional way, in an outdoor fire smothered with powdered horse dung to cut off the oxygen and turn the clay a deep, lustrous black. The designs, painted on by Julian, stayed matte against the shining surface.

The work sold, and it kept selling. Maria taught other families the technique, sharing rather than hoarding the revival. San Ildefonso pottery became internationally collected, and Maria herself received honorary doctorates from the University of Colorado and the University of New Mexico.