Maria Margarita "Margaret" Tafoya ( Tewa name: Corn Blossom; August 13, 1904 – February 25, 2001) was the matriarch of

Santa Clara Pueblo Santa Clara Pueblo (in Tewa: Khaʼpʼoe Ówîngeh ɑ̀ʔp’òː ʔówîŋgè ″Singing Water Village″, also known as ″Village of Wild Roses″ is a census-designated place (CDP) in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, United States and a federa ...

potters. She was a recipient of a 1984

National Heritage Fellowship The National Heritage Fellowship is a lifetime honor presented to master folk and traditional artists by the National Endowment for the Arts. Similar to Japan's Living National Treasure award, the Fellowship is the United States government's ...

awarded by the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.

Early life

Margaret was the daughter of Sara Fina (sometimes spelled Serafina) Guiterrez Tafoya (1863–1949) and Jose Geronimo Tafoya (1863–1955). She attended the Santa Clara Pueblo elementary school, and then the Santa Fe Indian School from 1915 to 1918. She had to drop out of high school to help her family during the

flu pandemic of 1918 The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...

. Margaret learned the art of making

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and ...

from her parents, and was particularly influenced by her mother. Sara Fina was considered the leading potter of Santa Clara in her day, as the master of making exceptionally large, finely polished blackware. She also occasionally made redware,

micaceous Micas ( ) are a group of silicate minerals whose outstanding physical characteristic is that individual mica crystals can easily be split into extremely thin elastic plates. This characteristic is described as perfect basal cleavage. Mica is ...

clay storage jars and other smaller utilitarian forms. Margaret's father was primarily concerned with raising food for the family but he was also known to make pottery and helped Sara Fina with many aspects of her pottery production. As a child, Tafoya started making small animals out of the clay that her parents had extracted from the Santa Clara land for Sara Fina's works. Showing promise, her mother encouraged young Margaret to make her own pottery and taught her how to knead the clay and polish shaped pots, as well as where to gather fuel for the firing process. Sara Fina allowed Margaret to sell her first pottery to a dealer in Santa Fe, although Margaret did not recall how much money she made that day. But the act of selling her work gave her confidence to continue making pottery.

Career

For several years, Margaret worked as a cook and a waitress before she married Alcario Tafoya (1900–1995) in 1924. Alcario, a distant relative with the same last name, and Margaret worked together making pottery just as her mother and father had done. Margaret and Sara Fina's husbands both helped with the tasks of digging and preparing the clay and the firing of the pots. Alcario also helped Margaret with the creation and carving of designs on her pots. Early in her career, Margaret often traded pottery for children's clothing or other household necessities to support her growing family. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Tafoyas would frequently load Margaret's pots into a horse-drawn wagon and travel hundreds of miles to Santa Fe and

Taos Taos or TAOS may refer to: Places * Taos, Missouri, a city in Cole County, Missouri, United States * Taos County, New Mexico, United States ** Taos, New Mexico, a city, the county seat of Taos County, New Mexico *** Taos art colony, an art colo ...

to sell the works to tourists and traders. Tafoya also began selling her works at Indian art fairs such as the

Santa Fe Indian Market The Santa Fe Indian Market is an annual art market held in Santa Fe, New Mexico on the weekend following the third Thursday in August. The event draws an estimated 150,000 people to the city from around the world. The Southwestern Association for ...

and the Inter-Tribal Ceremonial at Gallup. In the 1950s, as interest in Native American art grew, the public would travel to the pueblos as tourists as well as to buy artistic goods, so the family didn't have to travel as far to sell their wares. During this time period, the Tafoyas befriended the owner of a resort in Royal Gorge, Colorado who hired them for summer residencies to perform ceremonial dances and sell their pottery to guests. By the 1960s Margaret's pottery had become famous, particularly her large black jars. Margaret continued her mother's tradition of making these exceptionally large pots, with finely polished surfaces and simple carved designs. "Measuring as high as three feet, these vessels took months to mold and polish. They also required an enormous amount of technical skill, particularly to keep them from breaking while being fired". The labor-intensive techniques meant that Tafoya usually made only one large pot per year. Her "bear paw" motif and deeply carved

pueblo In the Southwestern United States, Pueblo (capitalized) refers to the Native tribes of Puebloans having fixed-location communities with permanent buildings which also are called pueblos (lowercased). The Spanish explorers of northern New Spain ...

symbols like the

Avanyu Avanyu (also Awanyu), is a Tewa deity, the guardian of water. Represented as a horned or plumed serpent with curves suggestive of flowing water or the zig-zag of lightning, Awanyu appears on the walls of caves located high above canyon rivers i ...

(water serpent) and

kiva A kiva is a space used by Puebloans for rites and political meetings, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, "kiva" means a large room that is circular and underground ...

steps around the shoulder of her jars have become signature trademarks of the Tafoya family pottery. Like her mother, Margaret molded her pots using the traditional coiling method. "This method and many of the techniques used in the production of her pottery has been dated as being as more than 1200 years old, with the ancient "Anasazi" of the Colorado Plateau being the founding culture. A common misconception was the belief that black on black, burnished pueblo pottery had "died out," according to Larry Frank and Francis H. Harlow. Tafoya's work "reflected the transformation of the Santa Clara pottery tradition from the utilitarian to the artistic".

Retrospective exhibitions

*1982: "Margaret Tafoya: A Potter’s Heritage and Her Legacy" at the Denver Museum of Natural History, City Park, Colorado *1983: "The Red and the Black: Santa Clara Pottery by Margaret Tafoya" at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, New Mexico *2015–2016: "Margaret Tafoya: Santa Clara Pueblo Potter" at the

Millicent Rogers Museum The Millicent Rogers Museum is an art museum in Taos, New Mexico, founded in 1956 by the family of Millicent Rogers. Initially the artworks were from the multi-cultural collections of Millicent Rogers and her mother, Mary B. Rogers, who donated ...

, El Prado, New Mexico

Awards and honors

*In both 1978 and 1979, Tafoya received the Best of Show Award at the

. *In 1984, the

awarded her a

in recognition of her accomplishments. *She was recognized and received an award as a Master Traditional Artist in 1985. *Also in 1985, she received the New Mexico Governor's Excellence in the Arts Award. *She was inducted into the

American Craft Council The American Craft Council (ACC) is a national non-profit organization that champions craft based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded in 1943 by Aileen Osborn Webb, the council hosts national craft shows and conferences, publishes a quarterly mag ...

College of Fellows in 1990. *In 1992, she received an Honor Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Visual Arts from the national Women's Caucus for Art. *Her works were displayed on the National Mall in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

at the 1992

Smithsonian Folklife Festival The Smithsonian Folklife Festival, launched in 1967, is an international exhibition of living cultural heritage presented annually in the summer in Washington, D.C. in the United States. It is held on the National Mall for two weeks around the F ...

. *In 1996, Tafoya received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southwestern Association of Indian Arts. *She received a Master Artist Award from the

Heard Museum The Heard Museum is a private, not-for-profit museum in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, dedicated to the advancement of American Indian art. It presents the stories of American Indian people from a first-person perspective, as well as exhibitio ...

Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1,608,139 residents as of 2020. It is the fifth-most populous city in the United States, and the on ...

(exact year unknown). *Tafoya is the only Native American ever awarded a Lifetime Contribution Award by the National Academy of Western Art at the Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center in

Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, a ...

(year of award unknown).

Legacy

Margaret and her husband Alcario raised thirteen children. At the time of her death in February 2001, Margaret had 30 grandchildren, 45 great-grandchildren, and 11 great-great-grandchildren. Many of her descendants are carrying on the Tafoya family tradition of pottery making, including: Toni Roller, Jeff Roller,

LuAnn Tafoya LuAnn Tafoya (born 1938 in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico) is a Native American potter. Like her mother, Margaret Tafoya, and her grandmother Sara Fina Tafoya, she creates large ceramic pieces using traditional methods. She is known for her larg ...

, Chris Youngblood, Nancy Youngblood, Nathan Youngblood, Darryl Whitegeese, Ryan Roller, Cliff Roller, Tim Roller, Tyler Roller, Jordan Roller, James Ebelacker, Sarena Ebelacker, Jamelyn Ebelacker, and

Tammy Garcia Tammy Garcia (born August 27, 1969, in Los Angeles, California) is a Santa Clara Pueblo sculptor and Ceramic artist. Garcia translates Pueblo pottery forms and iconography into sculptures in bronze and other media. Background Tammy Garcia is a m ...

References

External links

More information on Margaret Tafoya at the Holmes Museum of AnthropologyPhotos of many of Margaret Tafoya's pieces
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tafoya, Margaret 1904 births 2001 deaths Native American potters Artists from New Mexico National Heritage Fellowship winners Santa Clara Pueblo people American women ceramists American ceramists Native American women artists Women potters 20th-century American women artists 20th-century ceramists 20th-century Native Americans 20th-century Native American women