Before the people, there was the land

The 1992 Folklife Festival commemorated the Columbus Quincentenary, providing an opportunity to reflect on the profound forces that shaped life in the Americas over the preceding 500 years. For the New Mexico program, participants representing Native Americans, early Hispanic settlers, and later immigrants came together to discuss the complex underpinnings of the state’s robust regional culture and land-based lifeways that are anything but unchanging. Santa Clara Pueblo pottery was one of the traditional arts featured in the program and was set up in a large plaza surrounded by adobe structures.

Madeline Naranjo was born in 1916. She traveled to Washington with her daughter Frances, also a potter, and Tessie Naranjo (unrelated), who wrote about pottery in the Festival program book and helped present their work on the National Mall. The pottery area included works in progress and a display of the deeply etched and beautifully burnished pottery for which Santa Clara potters are so well known. Close observers could learn that the lustrous sheen on the surface is achieved by carefully polishing with a small, smooth stone after the pot is formed and carved.

—Tessie Naranjo, Santa Clara Puelbo

Pueblo pottery—in its many forms, colors, and surface design techniques—has drawn collectors since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the railroad and later automobiles brought tourists into the Southwest. A local craft art economy grew and remains strong today. The Festival had a robust Marketplace that year, including this beautiful bowl.