This is a creative new polychrome lidded jar by Russell Sanchez.   He continues to be one of the true innovators and revivalists in Pueblo pottery.  Each piece is perfectly coil-built, stone-polished, and etched.  The bowl has a round shape.  The top is polished white and etched with an avanyu encircling the piece.  Do you see the little bear paw behind the horn of the avanyu? That is one of Russell’s signature designs!  Below the avanyu is a double row of checkerboard patterns with the top row alternating red and matte, while the lower row is black and matte.  The bottom of the bowl is fully polished red. The unusual part of the piece is the lid!  The lid has a bear carved into the clay in relief.  It is fully polished a deep red and the surrounding area is micaceous black.  The avanyu has inset coral stones along with turquoise for the eye and horn.  The checkerboard corn designs have inset hematite stones along with three bands of inset hematite hei-shi beads.  The bottom of the bowl has inset turquoise stones.  The lid has inset coral and turquoise stones along with a larger inset piece of turquoise. In sum, there are 210 inset pieces of turquoise on this bowl!  Amazing!  The piece was made with native clay and native clay slips.  The polychrome area is a white clay that is polished and then incised and painted with red and black clays.  It is a very time-consuming process.  All the colors are derived from natural clays and inspired by historic San Ildefonso polychrome pottery (black/red/white), using many of the same clays!  The colorations of black, red, and white are all seen in San Ildefonso’s pottery from the 1880s to about 1920.  His deep red clay is another recent addition to his clay art, which started around 2005.  The last photo are the black, red, and white clays used on this piece.  As Russell continues to innovate from historic designs, he says, “Tradition means moving forward and adding to it. You keep moving forward.  If we stayed stagnant we would no longer exist.”  The bowl and lid are signed on the bottom in the clay, “Russell ’24”.  It is exciting to see how this imagery is not new, but Russell’s reinterpretation of it both modernizes and revives.