How did pottery become your life?
I was in the Air Force and came to Albuquerque in 1957. I was just wandering around town and I walked into a shop: Wright’s Trading Post. It was a marvelous old multi-story adobe building right downtown. I was looking around, and I saw this big, perfectly plain, polished black bowl.
I fell in love with it. I’d never seen anything like it. It looked like a jewel!
It was by Maria Martinez, the most famous Pueblo potter ever. She and her husband Julian reintroduced the black pottery in 1922 and they changed it by making it black on black. Black pottery existed for 2000 years, but they improved it. All five Northern New Mexico Pueblos, the Tewa-speaking Pueblos, made black pottery, but they weren’t highly polished. Maria developed a higher burnishing technique and Julian figured out how to put a matte design on her pots.
So, I saw that pot and I wanted it and said I’d take it. The proprietor told me it was $100 – I practically went into shock. I was making maybe double that a month in the Air Force. I said, I can’t do it. She said, Well, can you do $10 down and $10 a month? I replied, I think I can. So that’s the way I got my first Maria!
That’s what got me started. But I couldn’t afford anything and it was several years before I bought another piece. As I got promotions and salary increases, I kept buying. I put together a collection of Hopi pottery by the Nampeyo family. I had maybe 300 pieces. I set out to get a piece by every member of the family because they were all equally famous for pottery.
I retired from the Air Force in 1976 and went back to work as an engineer, a government contractor. But I was just bored. One day, I was driving in Old Town Albuquerque and I saw a guy tack up a ‘For Rent’ sign on the building. I stopped and talked to him. He said, I’ll let you have it for 400 a month. I thought, I don’t even have to sell one day to pay 400 a month! I signed up right then! I became a gallery owner. No pre-planning, it just happened.
Every day something comes in that’s totally different from what I have or what I’ve seen. Recently, I got a jar from Santa Ana Pueblo. It dates to 1830. I don’t know how many Santa Anas almost 200 years old are even in existence anymore. To find one in good condition is amazing.
Sadly, I don’t have that black pot anymore. It was stolen in a home burglary.
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