Maria Martinez

Martinez coiled her pots by hand, without a wheel, at San Ildefonso Pueblo in New Mexico, then polished them with smooth stones until they shone. Around 1919 she and her husband Julian developed black-on-black ware: Julian painted designs in a matte slip on the burnished surface, and smothering the firing with dung turned the whole pot black, so the pattern shows only as a change from gloss to matt. It was a family practice from start to finish, later continued by her son Popovi Da and grandson Tony Da, and it revived the pueblo's pottery economy.