Water Jar (Olla) (1880s): Art, History and Details

Water Jar (Olla) (1880s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The underside of this Zuni (A:shiwi) jar (olla), made by a woman to collect and store water in the 1800s, curves upward to allow the jar to be carried atop the head. Today, this traditional skill is celebrated by the Zuni Olla Maidens, a nationally known dance group that performs while balancing ollas on their heads. Ollas naturally keep water cool via evaporation through their porous walls, a valuable trait in the desert Southwest. Many Zuni say that water from an olla tastes better than water from a tap.

Object facts

• Title: Water Jar (Olla)
• Date: 1880s
• Culture: Native North America, Southwest, New Mexico, Zuni (A:shiwi) Pueblo
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic, slip
• Dimensions: Overall: 26.5 x 37.5 cm (10 7/16 x 14 3/4 in.)
• Collection: AA - Native North America
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1923.1082

Collection credit

Gift of the Smithsonian Institution

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Jenifer Neils. The World of Ceramics: Masterpieces from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Museum in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1982.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.