Bring your auction to collectors worldwide!
Get listed nowBy subscribing, you are agreeing to the privacy policy. Unsubscribe anytime.
Barnebys HQ
Brahegatan 10
BOX 5038
114 37 Stockholm
All auctions / Glass / Mata Ortiz Blackware Olla - Silver Checkerboard & Serpentine Motifs
Anonymous (Mexican, active XX-XXI century). Mata Ortiz blackware jar, n.d. Indecipherable signature on rim. A broad-shouldered olla whose burnished black ground carries a shimmering skin of hand-painted decoration, its lustrous graphite-silver sheen the signature of a reduction firing. A dense checkerboard field wraps the swelling body, punctuated at the lower belly by bold serpentine and geometric panels that spiral inward like coiling ribbons. The everted rim frames a glossy black interior. Hand-coiled and stone-polished rather than wheel-thrown, the vessel descends from the celebrated Mata Ortiz revival in northern Chihuahua, where potters reimagined the ancient Casas Grandes (Paquime) ceramic vocabulary. An indecipherable signature on the rim marks the maker's hand, in keeping with the village's tradition of individually signed studio wares prized by collectors. The Mata Ortiz phenomenon began in the 1960s and 70s with Juan Quezada Celado, a self-taught potter from a small village in Chihuahua who reverse-engineered the techniques of the prehistoric Casas Grandes (Paquime) culture from potsherds he found in the surrounding desert. His experiments, later shared with family and neighbors, seeded an entire community of studio potters who build vessels by hand-coiling local clays, burnish them with stones, paint them with fine brushes (often made from human hair), and fire them in open or reduction settings. The distinctive metallic-black surface seen here results from a smothered, oxygen-starved firing that carbonizes and vitrifies the polished slip into a graphite-like sheen. Unlike anonymous village craft, Mata Ortiz pieces are individually authored and signed, and the finest examples now command serious attention in the fine-art and Native-arts markets. Item # 204033
Estimate:$400
To the auctionView all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorGlass
Estimate:
$400
DANIELA ZENTILIN Studio Murano (Italy), a sculpture in colou...
08/27/2026
$487.26
Est: $538.76
Bring your auction to collectors worldwide!
Get listed now
Dolce & Gabbana Western Chelsea Boots in Burgundy Leather/Suede/Calf Hair
10/05/2026
$12
Hall's Hair Renewer and More Glass Medicine Bottles, Late 19th/20th Century
08/24/2026
$86
Est: $20
