Jar (Olla)

The ceramic arts best exemplify the extraordinary cultural continuity that is the hallmark of the Indian Southwest. Modifications in materials and technology aside, the pottery of the region has remained remarkably stable from its first appearance around 300 B.C. to the present. While nearly all Southwestern Indians participated to some degree in the pottery-making tradition, the Pueblos of northwestern New Mexico, with their longstanding ceramic history, surpassed all others.

One of the best-documented and most graceful of Pueblo ceramic traditions is that of the Zuni people. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Zuni polychrome painted pottery evolved from an integrated geometric tradition based on the triangle to a more ornate style with an emphasis on the curvilinear. The Cincinnati vessel exemplifies the latter tradition, the hallmark of which was a line of animals. The primary subjects, arranged in concentric friezes, consist of small birds, rabbits, and deer, which are presented against a background of subsidiary scrollwork.

An essential aspect of the Zuni-style deer is the red arrow of life or breath, which extends from its mouth to its heart. This characteristic Zuni feature, the heart line, was borrowed by other Pueblo peoples, including the Hopi and the Acoma.

The Cincinnati vessel is an olla, or water jar, acquired by James Stevenson during a Smithsonian Institution ethnographic expedition dispatched to the Zuni in 1879. It was given to the Cincinnati Art Museum in 1885 by the Smithsonian's United States National Museum in exchange for Cincinnati Rookwood pottery.