Located forty miles south of Gallup New Mexico, the Zuni pueblos produce a unique style of pottery that can easily be distinguished from the other pueblo pottery types based on form, design and materials.
Zuni Pueblo pottery is made of clay that uses crushed pottery shards or rock to temper it, which gives unfinished pottery a white color, almost like that of ceramic clays. However, most Zuni pottery is coated with a white or colored (usually red) slip and painted with black and red paints. With utility always in mind Zuni potters did not focus on symmetry of form as much as their neighbors at Acoma but rather on the design motifs.
Zuni Pueblo pottery is known for its lizard pots, but the pottery also uses other common animal images, including:
The “heartline” deer (also known as “deer-in-the-house”), an open-mouthed deer with an arrow extending from the mouth to the inside of the deer
Frog and tadpole, both symbols for rain
Dragonfly, summoner of the clouds
Zuni Pueblo artists also create very extravagant geometric designs, many of which incorporate zigzag lines, representative of flowing water.
