Maricopa Black-on-Red Frog Effigy Bowl with Rim Frogs

Native American, Maricopa. A Maricopa earthenware bowl with a rounded body and an inverted mouth, covered in a burnished red slip and painted in black. Two spotted frogs sit on opposite sides of the bowl. Their splayed bodies are modeled in relief down the wall, and their heads rise over the black-painted rim to look into the bowl, as if both have stopped at the same pond's edge. Each frog is dotted in black, and its toes end in fine painted lines. Between them, a band of solid triangles hangs from the lip, each one trailing a thin line that curls into a scroll. The contrast between the even red slip and the sparing black brushwork is typical of Maricopa work. So is the sculptural humor of the frogs, made for a growing market of collectors and travelers. The Maricopa (Piipaash) are a Yuman-speaking people of the middle Gila and Salt River valleys in central Arizona, where they have long lived alongside the Akimel O'odham (Pima). Maricopa potters built their vessels with the paddle-and-anvil method. They thinned the walls by striking the outside with a wooden paddle against a smooth stone held inside the pot. They then coated the vessel in an iron-rich red slip and polished it with a stone. The black designs were usually painted in a mesquite-sap pigment and fixed in a low firing, which gives Maricopa ware its clean red-and-black palette. Around the turn of the twentieth century, railroad tourism and the curio trade opened new outlets for Maricopa potters, who were mostly women. Alongside traditional jars and bowls, they made effigy forms, wedding vases, and vessels with modeled animals for outside buyers. Frogs suited both the technique and the region. In the desert Southwest, frogs and toads are widely tied to water and rain, so a vessel ringed with them carried a fitting, if unstated, theme. This red-and-black tradition was formalized in the 1930s through the Maricopa Pottery Makers' organization, and a later generation of potters continued it into the mid-century period. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 206126

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