This is a striking larger jar by Dolores Curran.  Before she began making her carved pieces, she was well known for her delicately painted buff-on-red pottery.  The jar is highly polished red and painted with a buff clay for the design.  Amazingly, she would paint each piece up to five times to get the color of the matte painted areas deep and consistent enough!  This jar has a water serpent around the neck.  Around the shoulder are two bands of feathers.  Note that three of the feathers on each are filled in with a matte red clay slip.  Separating the feathers are very tightly painted cloud patterns.  Below the shoulder are small cloud, rain and lightning designs.  So why doesn’t Dolores make this style anymore? She ran out of the cream colored clay slip for the painting, and so only uses it as an accent on her new work!  As well, this is a larger sized piece of her painted pottery, as she mostly made miniatures due to the time consuming nature of the painting. The jar is signed and dated on the bottom.  It is in excellent condition with no chips, cracks, restoration or repair.