Southwest Pueblo Pottery Still Life, Sunburst and Rattle, c. 1985–1995

The Painting

A tabletop of Southwest pottery, painted big and bold. On the left a round seed jar banded in zigzags, stepped terraces and spirals holds a spray of bleached desert branches. On the right a dark jar sits low against a great burnt orange fan whose rays sweep across the top of the canvas like a rising sun. Across the foreground lies a wrapped flute and a gourd rattle banded in coral, turquoise and gold, their pale cords looping loose over the floor tiles.

The handling is a deliberate mix of techniques. The orange rays are laid on thick with a loaded brush and swirled so each one catches the light. The shadows are soft and airbrushed, and the whole cream ground is flicked with fine spatter in black and rust, which gives it the look of fired clay. Outlines are drawn in dark paint around every form, so the composition reads as cleanly from across a room as a poster does.

It is a large canvas and it still wears its original frame, a rounded molding in pickled wood washed dusty pink with the grain showing through. Painting and frame were made to be seen together and they still are.

History & Provenance

In the mid 1980s Santa Fe style left New Mexico and took over American interiors. Bleached wood, adobe pinks, turquoise and terracotta moved into living rooms from Dallas to Seattle, and Pueblo pottery became one of the defining images of the decade. Painters answered with large still lifes built from the language of Pueblo ware: the seed jar, the polished blackware jar that Maria Martinez of San Ildefonso made famous, the banded rattle, the stepped cloud and sunrise forms.

This canvas belongs squarely to that moment. Rather than copying a particular pot, the painter treats the pottery as pure design, pushing the sunburst into a dramatic backdrop and letting the black jar disappear into its own shadow. The spatter ground, the airbrushed modeling and the pickled pink frame are all hallmarks of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and they are what set the date.

The painting is signed at the lower right in brown paint with a long sweeping underline. The hand reads as Callina, though the letters are drawn rather than written and Collins is a possible alternative. No painter working under either name has been documented and the hand remains unidentified, which is the ordinary condition of decorative art from this period: it was produced in volume for the interiors trade, sold through galleries and furniture showrooms, and signed without any expectation that the name would be looked up.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

This is a painting that holds a wall on its own. The sunburst gives it a strong horizontal sweep, which makes it a natural fit above a long sofa, a low credenza or a bed, and the palette of terracotta, cream, black and turquoise sits easily with leather, natural linen, warm woods and woven textiles.

It also brings back a look that is returning in a serious way. Designers are reaching for the warmth of 1980s Southwest interiors again, and a large original from the period, in its original frame, carries that mood with far more presence than anything made today to imitate it.

Hang it away from direct sun and heating vents, and dust the surface occasionally with a soft dry brush.