Lewis, Lucy – Jar with “Sunrise Mist” Design (1970s)

6.25"w x 5"h

$ 1,200.00

Lucy Lewis is one of the great Matriarch potters of the past century. This water jar is from the 1970s.  It is a very traditional Acoma design.  The jar is a smaller version of the classic water jar shape.  It is painted with bee-weed and red clay slip.  The design has a distinctive pattern that is meant to represent the mist in the sunrise. There are rain designs between the red sections and the black areas are the clouds in the sunrise.  THis is not a design that Lucy used very often in her later pottery, but it is always visually striking in appearance.  The shape works perfectly for the imagery and it’s exciting to see such an elegant water jar shape!  It is signed on the bottom, “Lucy M. Lewis”.  It is in excellent condition with no cracks, restoration, or repair.

“There was a time a long time ago when Acoma pottery had almost died out. Lucy revived it, she kept it going. We saw photos of the Mimbres pottery for the first time in the late fifties. Lucy had been doing fine-line designs much earlier, from the sherds. She had developed several different ways of doing those lines. Some of her designs were similar to the Mimbres ones, and when she saw those she went on developing more of her own.” Dolores Lewis, Spoken Through Clay