Sanchez, Russell – Polychrome Bowl with Seed & Flower Design

3.5"w x 2.75"h

$ 2,600.00

Russell Sanchez continues to be one of the true innovators in Pueblo pottery.  Each piece is perfectly coil built, stone polished and etched.  This is a small polychrome bowl with a flower and seed design.  The top is etched with the round flower petals and the sides have a seed design.  At the top of the petal designs, Russell has painted hatchwork patterns in black and red.  There is an asymmetry to them which is intentional, harkening to the early work of potters like Florentino Martinez, who often used hatchwork patterns in his polychrome pottery.  The bowl has a red polished neck.  There is a band if hematite hei-shi beads along with inset hematite stones.  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 is signed on the bottom in the clay.  It is exciting to see how this imagery is not new but Russell’s reinterpretation of it both modernizes and revives.

Russell Sanchez: Contemporizing the Pueblo Pottery Past