Olla Pottery

Pueblo or Zuni, mid 19th c.
Red earthenware clay, white clay slip, polychrome paint decoration.
Over-all in excellent condition with wear commensurate to age and use.
Pictorial Native American polychrome olla decorated with hand-painted butterfly and heartline deer figures with a raised rope-like scalloped molding adorning the outer top edge, formed with a slightly convex base.

The heartline deer motif originated in the Zuni Pueblo in western New Mexico during the 1860s and 1870s. The line symbolizes the life force of the animal or a prayer-pictographic invocation connected to hunting. Previously referred to as an antelope, the meaning of which was provided by John G. Bourke in 1881.