The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 29, 2024

Water Jar (Olla)

Water Jar (Olla)

1150–1325
Location: not on view

Description

Ancestral Pueblo ceramics feature striking black-and-white geometric motifs, here interconnected spirals interrupted by jagged lines. Meaning is unknown, but the complex pattern is reminiscent of water that eddies as it runs over rocks. With recent exceptions, pottery is a women’s art among modern Pueblo peoples who descend from the Ancestral Pueblo; the same was likely true in the ancient past. As today, the potter created her wares by coiling ropes of clay atop one another, smoothing and further shaping them, and then applying decoration with brushes made of maguey (agave) or yucca leaf chewed until the fibers formed bristles.
  • Sims, Lowery Stokes. The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content, and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2006. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 87, no. 18
  • Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (March 7-May 30, 2010).
    CMA 2010: "Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection" March 7 - May 30, 2010
    The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA), Cleveland, OH (June 9-August 20, 2006).
    MOCA Cleveland (6/9/2006 - 8/20/2006): "The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art", no. 18, p. 116, color repr. p. 87.
    Year in Review for 1984. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 3-May 5, 1985).
  • {{cite web|title=Water Jar (Olla)|url=false|author=|year=1150–1325|access-date=29 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1984.159