Susana Martinez Aguilar

Susana Martinez Aguilar was the wife of Ignacio Aguilar (1872-1945). She began making pottery in the 1890's and later taught her daughter-in-law Rosalie Aguilar how to make pottery. She had been making more traditional utilitarian San Ildefonso pottery, as can be seen in the photograph to the above right. However, she began making black-on-black, polychrome and red-on-red style pottery in the 1920's. In 1925 she began to sign her pottery. Jonathan Batkin wrote of her pottery, "Susana was a skilled potter whose work has been unfairly overlooked by many. Her pots are among the most finely made of the 1920's and 1930's.". While she made the vessels and decorated some of them, most were also painted by her husband and also her son Joe Aguilar.