A Rare Laguna Stirrup Pottery Canteen

Laguna or Acoma Pueblo

1870 - 1880, maybe earlier | Clay | Item 2110

This Laguna canteen (possibly Acoma) is an unusal play on the form. The pottery is worked to create a hole in the center that has a trapazoidal shape. It looks like a stirrup. Ancestral Pueblo (prehistoric) pottery can have this sort of quirky look. I imagine that the 19th century examples like this were derived from the potters seeing these ancestral examples.

The base and sides are framed by connecting rectangles that have a break in the center. These are all attached to a framing line that goes around the perimeter of the interior hole. The upper row of rectangles is reversed in color, with the rectangles showing up as white negative space as framed by the dark triangles bordering the edge. The base is painted with red slip and there is a dark border where the red meets the white slip. The spout is short and undecorated except for the top of its rim, where dark brown paint has been added.