Native American Art
The Zia Dough Bowl
Project Updates
- The bowl arrived at the Hood Museum in October. Further progress in arranging for display and teaching use have been put on hold due to staff and museum funding cuts caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
- Museum Director, John Stomberg notes in a letter to the Class of 1968: "Both faculty and students have long found that studying original works of art is not only inspiring, but also critical to learning how to look, observe, assess, and interpret. This bowl will certainly have a busy life in the context of teaching art in our study galleries."
Description
ZIA CLASSIC POLYCHROME DOUGH BOWL WITH UNDULATING BAND
circa 1890
Dimensions: 17.5” wide x 9.5” deep
Condition: Beautifully worn with ethnographic wear (Pueblo home use)
Design: Clouds and rain at the top, with an undulating band that might be flowing water or mountains. The lower design is likely plant life growing from watered soil.
The Zia Pueblo allowed little artistic license in the 19th century. As a design approved by the Pueblo elders the dynamic iconography of the bowl is a prayer for rain.
Why Native American Art?
- President Hanlon in his Call to Lead program told the Director of the college museum that he wanted Dartmouth to become a leader in Native American Studies and that included art. The college then provided the very serious step of funding a full-time curatorial position in Native American Art.
- The new Native American Curator, Jami Powell, described the collection of Native American artworks at Dartmouth as strong but lacking a core group of significant masterpieces.
- The Director of the Hood Museum, John Stomberg, reviewed different ways donors could be of help to the Hood. He felt as a class gift we could be of greatest help in acquiring a masterpiece or perhaps over time a series of masterpieces to lift the collection’s profile for being a leader in the teaching and exhibition of Native American art.
- During the July 2020 Class Committee meeting John Stomberg discussed the teaching potential for a work of art like the Zia Dough Bowl. John described the way in which close personal contact with a work of art can result in a student's epiphanous understanding of the work in a way that a photo cannot.
Comments about the Zia Dough Bowl
Lyn A. Fox - Fox Fine Pueblo Pottery
1. Rarity: Only a few pueblos (especially Zia) had a tradition of making the large dough bowls.
Why Zia? First, the basalt (volcanic ash) infused pottery clay found at Zia Pueblo lent itself well to thick walled utilitarian pottery that would withstand the rigors of heavy use including outward pressure from kneading dough and bathing kicking babies.
Next, making very large ceramics using traditional coiling method is a rare and exacting skill. More potters could make smaller bowls and jars. The large coils (snakes of clay like we all made as children) needed for this bowl required the potter to prepare the clay to an exacting standard to be sure that almost all impurities and air bubbles were removed. One or 2 tiny air bubbles could cause a large bowl to explode in natural outdoor firing prone to spiking temperatures if sudden mountain winds arose. The potter needed to be expert in building the bowl too, forming and smoothing as she stacked thick heavy clay coils. If she stacked the coils too quickly, the heavy wet clay would collapse and the bowl would at best, keen to one side or the other. If she stacked too slowly, the coils could dry out in the dry New Mexico air and additional coils could not be added. There could also be almost no air bubbles between the coils because these too could cause cracking in firing.
Perhaps all of these challenges meant that only a fraction of potters could produce large vessels or even have the desire to do so. The main reason that the potter who created this bowl had the skills to do so was likely because her mother made large pots and taught her. She and her family were possibly the source of large bowls for other pueblo members.
As I mentioned before bowls like this that predate the vibrant pottery market to come often broke from use before they could be sold into the art market. Early bowls would also not have been desired by early travelers to New Mexico (remember that trains didn’t connect New Mexico to the rest of the country until the 1880’s) due to the challenges of transporting them home (no FedEx, no bubble wrap).
Possibly, these large utilitarian vessels may not have been a desired “Indian” aesthetic. In the 1880’s, Aaron and Jake Gold began commissioning little figures called rain gods from potters at Tesuque pueblo for their Santa Fe based trading post and wholesaling business because galleries in the eastern United States thought that utilitarian pots simply didn’t "look Indian enough."
2. Design: The traditional cloud and rain and flowing water design (the undulating band in the center) is classic for large bowls at Zia in the 19th century. This array of designs represent a prayer for rain for all living beings. The simplicity of design and spiritual element make for a work of art that remains timeless and pleasing.
3. Aesthetic: All of the design elements are particularly well done in this bowl. It features near flawless form, both for utilitarian purposes and as art. The mineral paints too are rich and vibrant even after 120 or more years. An important aspect of the color is seen in the inner bowl which is a very deep stone polished red. The iron oxide rich vein of clay that produced this deep red, played out at Zia as early as 1900 and certainly by World War I according to one Zia pueblo sources. Potters at Zia still search for that color today.
Finally, the exterior surface shows lovely wear from pueblo home use (patina), but not so much wear that the designs are obliterated. The fire cloud or bruise is a lovely remnant and proof of traditional outdoor firing. Electric kilns more commonly used today, do not leave marks like these. Fire clouds were considered beautiful by the pueblo people. To me, they still are.
This is an exceptional early example of the dough bowl form.