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Finding pottery on display at a natural history museum is nothing new. But finding pottery by a master potter is a whole other matter.

That's just what recent visitors to Carnegie Museum of Natural History have encountered with "Born of Fire: The Life and Pottery of Margaret Tafoya." It is the first ever East Coast exhibit of 20th-century master potter Tafoya (1904-2001). The exhibit features more than 75 pieces created by Tafoya, pieces by her mother and daughters, and rare early works from Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico, by which Tafoya was inspired.

The works on display include unusually large storage and water jars, traditional wedding vases, bowls and plates. All were created from a process involving the digging and drying of Santa Clara clay, forming the vessels using a coil method and polishing the surface with a stone to achieve a glassy, smooth finish. Many of the vessels have a glossy black surface, the result of being fired outdoors using a wood-fired kiln and manure to turn the clay black.

Tafoya was one of the last surviving Pueblo matriarchs of the early 20th century. She was known for her commitment to quality and precision in an art form she helped to cultivate and preserve.

"Her pottery bridges the gap between the present and past, and her long career helped push contemporary Pueblo pottery from utilitarian art to fine art," says John Krena, owner of Four Winds Gallery of Pittsburgh and a private collector of Tafoya pottery.

Krena began collecting Tafoya's pottery in 1975, and his collection of more than 70 pieces makes up the bulk of this exhibit. "Several of the pots in the Carnegie exhibition were purchased in the 1970s," Krena says. "I was a visitor at (Tafoya's) home for many years until her death, and was inspired by her inner strength and beauty as well as her obvious excellence as an artist."

Thus, the Carnegie exhibition reflects a 30-year relationship Krena shared with Tafoya, as well as a commitment to document her lifetime achievements in the ceramic world. After Krena first met the artist, Tafoya became famous for her work and, over the next two decades, she would go on to receive several prestigious awards, including best of show at Santa Fe Indian Market (1989) and a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Foundation of the Arts (1984).

Tafoya was born in 1904 at Santa Clara Pueblo in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. And although she is considered the matriarch of Santa Clara Pueblo pottery, she learned her craft from her parents and relatives. While her mother, Sara Fina Gutierrez Tafoya, was the primary influence over her art, Tafoya benefited from the knowledge and experience of many of her relatives who were deeply immersed in the tradition of creating pottery.

Tafoya often collaborated with her husband, Alcario Tafoya. Together, they would design carvings that reflect the history, religion and culture of their Pueblo. The designs include representations of water serpents, ceremonial kivas, rain clouds and buffalo horns. Margaret Tafoya's trademark pieces are her works of highly polished blackware with impressed bear paws, a symbol of good luck.

Inspired by tales from her parents and grandparents, Tafoya, like her mother, was known for her ability to make unusually large storage and water jars in the tradition of her ancestors.

One of the largest pieces on display, at a remarkable 2 feet tall, was created in the 1950s. A flawless black vessel, it is inscribed with a bear paw at the neck. From extraction of the clay from the earth to the final firing process, hundreds of hours went into the production of a vessel as large as this.

The exhibit also includes additional works by Tafoya's mother and descendants, including rare early works from the Santa Clara Pueblo where she lived.

Santa Clara is not only home to the Tafoya family, but also to a community of artisans famous for their black polished and red polychrome pottery. Santa Clara long has been noted for its pottery tradition, which emerged around 500 A.D. when the Pueblo people developed agriculture and adopted a more settled lifestyle than that of their nomadic hunting-and-gathering ancestors.

For more than 1,000 years, pottery had been an important trade commodity among the Rio Grande Pueblos, and archeological evidence demonstrates its widespread use among people of the region. With the arrival of Spaniards and other Europeans in the 16th century, pottery commerce continued. After the opening of the Santa Fe Trail in 1821, however, utilitarian Pueblo-made pottery was gradually replaced by machine-made products.

By the turn of the 20th century, Pueblo pottery was beginning to be identified as an art form, collected by anthropologists, historians, artists and patrons of the arts. Tafoya's family, she once said, had been potters "as far back as records exist."

Yet it is Tafoya who has set the standard -- in both the quality and size of her oeuvre -- for future generations of Pueblo potters working in the tradition of their ancestors. In fact, several of Tafoya's children and grandchildren continue to create works in the Santa Clara tradition of pottery making to this day.

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