A guide for both the collector and the general reader who would like additional information about Native American pottery and potters.

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Pottery is one of the earliest and oldest crafts in the history of mankind. It has evolved from the utilitarian to the purely artistic, from cooking pots to storyteller dolls. Native American pottery has flourished in the American Southwest since 300 B.C. This selected bibliography is a guide for both the collector and the general reader who would like additional information about Native American pottery and potters.

Marcia Muth is a graduate of the University of Michigan. She was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1919 and grew up in Indiana and western New York State. A former research librarian, she was also an artist and her work is in private and public collections including The Jewish Museum (New York), The Albuquerque Museum, Museum of Fine Arts (Santa Fe) and the Art Museum of Southeast Texas (Beaumont). She is the author of Fake Ivory, New and Selected Poems, A World Set Apart: Memory Paintings, Words and Images, Sticks and Stones and Other Poems, Thin Ice and Other Poems, Writing and Selling Poetry, Fiction, Articles, Plays & Local History, Kachinas: A Selected Bibliography, How to Paint and Sell Your Art, Is It Safe To Drink the Water? A Guide to Santa Fe, Post Card Views and Other Souvenirs, Ma Frump’s Cultural Guide to Instant Intellectualism, and Ma Frump’s Cultural Guide to Plastic Gardening, all from Sunstone Press.

Website: http://books.google.com/books?id=G4d9AAAACAAJ&dq=9780865340671&cd=1

Softcover:
5 1/2 x 8 1/2
ISBN: 978-0-86534-067-1
32 pp.,$6.95

eBook:
ISBN: 978-1-61139-925-7
32 pp.,$3.99

Order from Sunstone: (505) 988-4418

Maria Martinez is the renowned late potter of San Ildefonso Pueblo in New Mexico whose pots were often given by President Lyndon Johnson to visiting heads of state. This book tells, in simple terms and photographs, how she produced her famous polished blackware. Maria’s pots are in museums and private collections all over the world. Hazel Hyde originally composed a picture story similar to the current book about Maria Martinez in 1930 for the students in her private school in New York City to teach them about pottery making among American Southwestern Indians.

Website: http://books.google.com/books?id=iRD2AQAACAAJ&dq=Maria+Making+Pottery+Sunstone

Softcover:
6 X 9
ISBN: 978-0-86534-156-2
32 pp.,$7.95

LAVISHLY ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR AND B&W

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Artists began coming to New Mexico in the late nineteenth century. They came from everywhere, from Maine to California and a few from Europe. They were attracted by the dazzling New Mexican landscape, the hospitality of town and village life, and very important, the Indian and Hispanic cultures that had shaped the artistic imagination of New Mexico for centuries.

From an artist’s point of view it was a rich mix, and between art and odd jobs, they managed to make a living. Until the Great Depression of the 1930s. Then, as the artist Louie Ewing said, “the jobs ran out.” No matter what you were willing to do, there was no work, and nobody was buying pictures and pots.

Help came from Washington. New Deal planners offered artists jobs to “beautify” the community. Almost immediately, artists in New Mexico picked up their brushes and chisels, and for almost ten years, between 1933 to 1943, signed onto Federal programs.

How did artists, traditionally loners, like working for the government? When the Santa Fe artist William Lumpkins was asked, he said: “We thought it was heaven on earth to be paid to paint.”

Fortunately, many New Deal artists had the opportunity to speak for themselves. In state-sponsored interviews they tell us in their own words what the New Deal art programs meant to them. Their rich interpretations of that experience and a selection of the work they produced is what this book is about.

JACQUELINE HOEFER’s publications include Imagining the Garden, a book of poems; Weather Songs, three poems set to music by Lanham Deal; and critical essays on contemporary writers, among them, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Norman Mailer. Her latest book is Night in a White Wood, New and Selected Poems.

Mrs. Hoefer received a Ph.D. in American literature from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, and in the early 1960s taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and at San Francisco State University. In 1967, she joined her husband Peter Hoefer in starting Hoefer Scientific Instruments, a San Francisco company specializing in producing instruments for biological research. After Peter Hoefer’s death in 1987, she carried on as chief executive officer. She is currently an editor for Sunstone Press.

Website: http://www.newdeallegacy.org
Website: http://books.google.com/books?id=TsiVodGK2cAC

Hardcover:
8 1/2 x 11
ISBN: 978-0-86534-305-4
196 pp.,$60.00

Softcover:
8 1/2 X 11
ISBN: 978-0-86534-371-9
196 pp.,$45.00

Order from Sunstone: (800) 243-5644

Many books about ceramics provide technique upon technique, tool upon tool, recipe upon recipe. Mastery of gadgets and quick, tricky how-to-do-it techniques may seem the way to go. But this leaves no place for adventure. This book has good recipes, of course, but it is really for those who will ultimately create their own new recipes and forms. The motivation is in the mind. Guideposts are necessary and they must be visualized. This book is written in the belief that the motivation will find the method.

Willard Spence pioneered the development of special glazes, mixing over two hundred samples. He perfected medium-range zinc crystal glazes and developed a remarkable low temperature iron crystal aventurine glaze. Spence studied design at the University of Denver and the University of Chicago. Later, living in Taos, New Mexico, he operated the gallery Casa de Artes and was instrumental in the founding of the New Mexico Potters’ Association. He has also taught ceramics in Continuing Education programs at the Denver Center of the University of Colorado and the Taos Center of the University of New Mexico. He has advised his many students to work firsthand with many materials and to “unravel their secrets for the added dimension of creative discovery.”

Website: http://books.google.com/books?id=VdplrhS_DXEC&q=086534003X&dq=086534003X&hl=en&sa=X&ei=N_DPT-7eIeqs2

Softcover:
5 1/2 x 8 1/2
ISBN: 978-0-86534-003-9
192 pp.,$22.95

eBook:
ISBN: 978-1-61139-946-2
192 pp.,$7.99

Order from Sunstone Press: (800) 243-5644

This short bibliography was mothered, as is often the case, by necessity. During the past years Native American arts have come out of the handicraft stage into which they had once fallen and are now in the realm of fine arts. Because of this renaissance people have become interested in the history and development of the native arts, and nowhere is this more evident than in ceramics. When the beginner starts looking for information on Native American pottery there are one of two dilemmas: 1) there is nothing available or 2) there is too much. This bibliography, it is hoped, will help steer a course between the two extremes.

William Farrington was a professional librarian for twenty-five years in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and California. His non-fiction articles have appear in national magazines and he has served as a book reviewer for various periodicals. He is also the author of Los Penitentes, A Brief History, also published by Sunstone Press.

Softcover:
6 x 9
ISBN: 978-0-913270-45-5
26 pp.,$14.95