SOUTHWEST CLAY POTTERY: Handcoiled retailer micaceous

This piece is one of my “Bird Track Series” pieces. These are pieces that have bird tracks indented in the clay and suggest a story to be told. Here we have a saucer with three birds perched on the rim. They appear to have come together for a purpose because their tracks are evident in the bowl of the saucer.

The birds, like the saucer, are made of micaceous clay that is dug from the nearby Sangre de Christo mountains around Taos, New Mexico. The saucer is made in the traditional hand-coil way of the Pueblo potters, polished with a stone, and then fired in a cedar wood open pit fire. retailer Finally, horse hair was added to the saucer, giving it a spidery look. The three little birds have a cedar splinter beak.

The diameter of the saucer is 5” and the height is 1 1/2”.