Lucy Lewis is one of the great Matriarch potters of the past century. This thin-walled jar is from the 1970s.  It is a very traditional Acoma design.  The jar has a mountain design on the top of the shoulder.  There are red mountain patterns next to the lighting and rain designs.  Spiraling down to the base are four Acoma-style birds.  While she was later influenced by Mimbres and Chaco canyon styles, her continued interest in reviving historic Acoma imagery is manifest in this jar.  The shape works perfectly for the imagery and it’s exciting to see such an elegant water jar shape in a small size!  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