Native American Pottery: How to Identify and Price Cochiti and Tesuque Pueblo Pottery (Part 1)

Early Native American Cochiti and Tesuque pottery is highly sought after by pueblo pottery collectors. Learn about the different types and history of Cochiti and Tesuque pottery. Dr. Mark Sublette owner of Medicine Man Gallery with 25 years experience gives you tips on what to look for when collecting Cochiti and Tesuque pottery.

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Native American Pottery - How to identify and price Cochiti and Tesuque Pueblo pottery (Part 1)

Hi, today I'd like to talk to you about Cochiti Pueblo pottery. It's actually one of my favorites; I just love the design elements and it's not a very common Pueblo pot. One of the things you'll find about this Native American pottery is it's located in the Cochiti Pueblo, which is between Santa Fe and Albuquerque (about half way). In fact, if you were go there today you'd find a very vibrant pottery community making primarily figurines, and there's a great golf course for you golfers.

First, the way you recognize Cochiti Pueblo pottery – especially the early material and that's really what I'm talking about today (this is between about 1880s to about 1920s) – is you look for a few things. One is that you like to see floating elements. You can see floating elements here and here. You have a bird design. Also very commonly, you will see these designs of clouds or rains; sometimes they'll be little dots, like you can see in the figurines, but there's generally a lot of artwork that goes on the pot itself.

With both these Pueblo canteens, in fact, you can see in here the early little dots and dots and again this cream color background. On the bottom, you'll see a line if it's an early pot, like this a red line with a stone polished bottom.

Now sometimes these are confused with Native American Tesuque pots. Tesuque pots can be of different colors too; they can be of red, they usually have even more ornate coloration. In fact, the examples I'm showing you now are of Tesuque pots, and you can see in these they have just a different slight different embellishment, and they are also valuable and hard to find. The black paint is from a spinach or a bee’s weed, and what happens is when this black is painted originally before the firing it's really clear, but once it fires then the black comes out, and so you'll see this very dark black against the screen color pot.

So, what you want to know when you see Pueblo pottery from Cochiti is condition. Now you try to find pieces that have the least amount of wear, and also sometimes (like dough balls) they were actually used. This is a little chili bowl, and you can see on the inside it has painting, that again is very characteristic of Cochiti pots. They have the painting on the inside if this is Santa Domingo, which sometimes they can be confused with. You usually don't see as much paint, and you rarely see the white on the inside, and especially with the design elements in the pot itself.

The other type of pottery we'll talk about in the next video is going to be figurines, which is another big component of Cochiti Pueblo pottery.