Water Jar (Olla) with Rainbird (1850–60): Art, History and Details

Water Jar (Olla) with Rainbird (1850–60) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Zuni (A:shiwi) women used ollas (oy-ahs) like this one to collect, carry, and store water. The water well was a place for socializing, and the vessels’ public visibility may help to explain their elaborate, deftly painted decoration—here an abstract creature called the Rainbird whose beak spirals between two stylized, stepped wings that may allude to moisture-bearing clouds. Milford Nahohai, the contemporary Zuni potter, believes the motif is inspired by rain clouds that roll into the Zuni River Valley, their leading edges curled under the main mass to form a curve like that of the beak.

Object facts

• Title: Water Jar (Olla) with Rainbird
• Date: 1850–60
• Culture: Native North America, Southwest, New Mexico, Zuni (A:shiwi) Pueblo
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic, slip
• Dimensions: Overall: 25.5 x 33 cm (10 1/16 x 13 in.)
• Collection: AA - Native North America
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1937.898

Collection credit

Gift of Amelia Elizabeth White

Further reading listed by the museum

• Bergh, Susan E., "Unburied Treasure", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 45 no. 10, December 2005
• Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014.
• "The North Galleries." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 54, no. 1 (January/February 2014): 24-29.

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.