This is a tall fully designed jar by Dolores Curran.  She continues to create intricately incised and painted pottery.  She was inspired to create these red polychrome incised and painted by her husband, Alvin Curran.  He was known for his incised San Juan-style pottery in the late 1990s.  This piece is a storage jar shape with a high shoulder and a short neck.  The round shape and high sides create a lot of space for design.  One side has a horse.  The opposite side has dragonflies.  The two opposite sides have rain clouds, prayer feathers, and rain birds.  Note the feather designs above and below each of the designed sections!  The lid has a polished bear on the top.  It has additional painted red-on-red designs along with incised lightning patterns.  The flat part of the lid is also fully incised with an avanyu!  Dolores said she rag-polished the rim of the lid to match the surface of the jar.  Note the use of various depths of design and various clay colors.  The designs are incised into the clay and then highlighted with clay slips, and note how even in the incised areas she has added red clay!  To create a piece with so much design and so much coloration and yet have them draw the eye from one “scene” to the next, is remarkable.  To see it on a larger piece has given Dolores an additional “canvas” in terms of size to accentuate her imagery and various techniques.  All the colorations are from natural clay slips.  It is an extraordinary amount of time to create pieces intricate both in design and to use the various clay additions.   The jar is signed on the bottom in the clay, “Dolores Curran”.