Bernice Naranjo Etched Buffalo Pot

Dimensions:-

Height: 9.5"

Width: 5.5"

Opening: 1 1/4"

Tribe:  Taos Pueblo

Item #: 40037

Artist: 

Bernice Suazo Naranjo

Bernice Suazo Naranjo is originally from Taos Pueblo and is married to Tito Naranjo. She is a sister-in-law of Jody Folwell and Nora Naranjo-Morse. She is also the mother of Caroline Elliot, Dusty Naranjo and the grandmother of Johnathan Naranjo. 

She has won numerous awards for her incised pottery at Santa Fe Indian Market and the Heard Museum Market. Bernice Suazo Naranjo is known for her elegant hand coiled and finely detailed sgraffito carving on a dramatic sienna finish. Both the carving and sienna finish require multiple specialized and time-consuming steps to achieve. She signs her work with a hallmark which represents her name in Tiwa, meaning “Stripe Rock. 

Bernice has “learned to really respect the clay. And I think that comes natural because we are all raised in an environment so that we’re in tune with nature. It’s a cycle.”*
“When you lose a. pot, you lose yourself. Sometimes you have a special feeling for a pot and you hate to fire it because you are so afraid it will break, but that’s part of the beauty of firing outdoors. You have got to learn to cope with it. I like the idea that not everything is going to survive, because that’s the way it is—part of being a potter.”*
*As quoted in Talking with the Clay: The Art of Pueblo Pottery by Stephen Trimble.