See a Color Recording of Maria Martinez Making Pottery from 1952
By Chadd Scott on
You’ve seen Maria Martinez pottery. Everyone has seen Maria Martinez pottery.
But you’ve likely never seen Maria Martinez making pottery.
An astounding film from 1952 shows just that. Watch it here. Over more than 20 minutes, Martinez is seen undertaking almost every part of her ceramics process at the San Ildefonso Pueblo. In color!
This is likely the earliest, most extensive color recording of Martinez (1887–1980) making artwork. Each frame proves more remarkable than the last.
Her colorful dress. Her big, beaming smile. The impossibly fine mixture of clay and volcanic ash which becomes her pottery. How swiftly her hands move shaping and polishing the vessels. Painting the design with a yucca leaf. The firing. Her shiny black pots coming out of the fire.
The film ends with Martinez singing.
Astonishing.
Martinez’ son, famed potter Popovi Da (1922–1971), appears in the video. As does Nora Eccles Treadwell Harrison (1902 –1978). Her first husband, Walter Treadwell, a photographer, was behind the camera. He shot the 60-millimeter film of Martinez over several days.
The video, along with one of the best collections of American studio ceramics in the American West, can be seen at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State University in Logan, UT, 80 miles north of Salt Lake City. Harrison’s gift of $2 million and 400 ceramic pieces from her personal collection allowed the museum to open in 1982 and set the institution on the course it follows today.
The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State University.
Currently on view at the museum through May 3, 2025, is an exhibition of ceramics by Native American artists, including Martinez, from the permanent collection. The museum’s collection includes pieces made by Martinez during the 1952 recording.
In June of 2024, the museum also published a new book, “Unearthed: The NEHMA Ceramics Collection and the Woman Behind It,” sharing untold stories of American ceramics while presenting a broader, richer history of the American ceramics’ tradition than any previously available.
“The Woman Behind It,” of course, is Harrison.
“She was both a potter and a student of pottery,” Katie Lee-Koven, Executive Director and Chief Curator at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, said. “She really loved to meet potters and ceramicists and learn about their processes and collect their work.”
Harrison came from one of the wealthiest families in Utah. She attended Utah State University before heading off to UCLA and then Cal-Berkley. She lived in Oakland for many years. It was there, in her 40s, where she first took ceramics lessons, eventually becoming good enough to teach.
Harrison collected prodigiously. Her fascination with the art form took her to studios around the country, particularly in the West – like with Martinez – and especially around California. She wasn’t only interested in the finished product, she was curious about the artists and their process.
“The ceramics world tends to be very word of mouth where you kind of learn about things, like this big family tree,” Lee-Koven said. “She would learn from a potter and hear about some other potter's work and their processes and then go from there.”
As part of Harrison’s estate planning, she established an endowment to provide for NEHMA’s continual purchases of ceramics, holdings now numbering over 1,500 pieces.
Native American ceramics from the Southwest on view at the Norra Eccles Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State University.
“Unearthed”
“Unearthed: The NEHMA Ceramics Collection and the Woman Behind It” highlights the wide-ranging influence of Harrison, whose comprehensive vision of American ceramics evolved through a vast network reaching from the intellectual circles of San Francisco to the Pueblo matriarchs of the Southwest. Through 256 pages, the book showcases selections from the museum focusing on the history of ceramics west of the Mississippi River since 1900.
“A lot of our stories of American art have been very East centric, New York centric; I think that's changed a lot,” Lee-Kovan said.
“Unearthed” helps balance the coastal scales, demonstrating how the West not only influenced American ceramics, but through its ceramics, all of American art.
It was here where a merging of global ceramic traditions came together. Through conquest, colonization, and migration, Euro-American, Native North American, East Asian, African American, and Latin American ceramics converged, profoundly shaping the West’s, and the nation’s, artistic legacy.
“It's easy for people to put pottery as a thing that is very straightforward in our minds, but our collection has always been largely focused on exploring the vessel form, but vessel in ways that you would never imagine, that become very sculptural, very much challenging the idea of functionality and really exploring different ideas technically, artistically, functionally,” Lee-Kovan said. “There's not one story (of American ceramics) and we're starting to embrace that more, and the complexity of what was happening in different locations throughout the western U.S. and throughout the entire U.S.”
Maria Martinez (1887 – 1980), Plate, date unknown. Earthenware, Black, reduction fired plate, with radial feather design in painted slip; 1.5 x 13 x 13 in. Gift of the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation. 1984.1458.
Illustrated biographical entries on more than 200 artists and artworks are featured in the book. The selection of artists includes both known and under-recognized artists, women artists, influential women ceramics educators, and Native American ceramicists. The publication provides a more accurate view of how wide-ranging and diverse the field has been, even prior to the 20th century, and up to the present day.
As much as a history, Lee-Koven hopes it will be used as a handbook.
“It's a resource where you can flip through it,” she said. “I intentionally didn't format it as a coffee table scale because I know that collectors will use it when they're looking and thinking about ceramics.”
Visiting the pueblos and pottery studios and art museums across the West. Admiring and collecting ceramics. Following in Harrison’s footsteps.
