Posted 8 years ago
jbingham95
(94 items)
I don't have or collect very much pottery.The colors and artwork was so unique I couldn't pass them by so I bought these at the local thrift store.After getting them home I noticed a lot more things going on in the background behind the pattern that I've seen somewhere before but it doesn't come up online.There's totally different symbols around the main pattern on each piece and in direct lighting there's a mixture of several different colors that come out.I had no idea they were signed either.I could only make out the year 94 on each.The vase has a different signature than the plates.
It isn't Native American, it's contemporary studio pottery. It is usually next to impossible to identify the potter, unless he or she is nationally known, since there are probably hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. and elsewhere who have made pottery in the last 40-50 years or so, most are known only locally, if at all.
Traditional Native American potters work with local clay, do not use a potter's wheel, or glaze, or fire their pottery in a kiln (and rarely, if ever, date their pieces). While the two plates may have a vaguely "Indian" design pattern, they
were made with a commercial stoneware clay, glazed, and fired in a kiln.
Lots of potters make "Southwest" or Native American-inspired pieces, but that doesn't mean the pottery is Native American. In order to be considered and sold as such, the potter must be an enrolled member or artisan of a federally-recognized U.S. tribe.
Thanks CanyonRoad for the great information you provided on these pieces.I'm switching them to studio pottery and changing the heading.Thanks again.
There's a page on FB that helps with studio pottery ID, you could try them:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/StudioPotteryID/
There's also a website that lists various artists by signature/mark/chop, if you want to try and match what you have to what they have listed there:
http://themarksproject.org/
And there's always Signaturefinder which doesn't often help but sometimes:
http://www.signaturefinder.com/
Hello Katherine,thanks for taking the time to let me know were to try and find this signature.These are also great resources for finding who signed pottery in the future.Thanks again.