Gateway To The Copper Corridor

San Carlos
Apache Potter teaches class on pottery making
By Susanne Jerome
Staff Reporter
Marlowe Cassadore,
director
of the San Carlos
Apache Cultural Center
hosted potter, Sheldon
Nunez-Valardy, a Jicarilla
Apache from New Mexico
to teach a week-long class
in pottery making.
Nunez-Velardy brought
some micaceous clay from a
special place in New Mexico.
The clay is full of tiny flakes
of mica which made it shine.
All week his class of wouldbe
potters coiled their pots
and then smoothed and polished
them under his eye until
they shown, round and stylish
and ready to be fired.
In the old days there were
no electric kilns, and the
Apache didn’t build clay ovens.
They used a fire. According
to Velardy they used to
heat the pots gradually up to
Susanne Jerome/Gateway
In the old days there were no electric kilns, and the Apache
didn’t build clay ovens. They used a fire.
about 500 degrees by putting
them around a campfire and
rotating them while they were
heating. He said that he had
tried the process once to see if
it would work, and it did, but
it took forever.
Today they stacked the pots
on trays and heated them in
the Peridot Head Start’s oven.
On Friday morning they put
the pots in the oven for three
hours, moving the temperature
up from 200 to 500 degrees.
When they removed them at 1
p.m., they had been at 500 degrees
for an hour. Now they
were pre-treated and could be
fired without cracking.
They put a grate over the
coals of a fire they had been
preparing and stacked the pots
face down on it. It was hot
work at one in the afternoon.
After the pots were stacked
there was a flurry of activity
as the potters quickly leaned
slim sticks of kindling against
the grate and against the pots
on the grate. Finally, they put
kindling all over the top of the
carefully constructed pile of
pots. As they put the pieces
of wood in place, the kindling
was catching fire from the fire
under the grate, so they had to
step lively. In a few minutes
the blaze had completely consumed
the wood and had fired
the pots. Many pots had black
marks on them from the blaze,
but as Nunez-Velardy explained,
those were not flaws
but characteristics of the pots.
During the fire Tony Belvado
kept watch with a hose
as the fire showed some ambition
to spread from its pit, and
he drowned the fire thoroughly
after the pots had been carefully
removed using a hooked
metal pole.
In the last week, people had
been building wickiups, and
the next weeks will feature
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Susanne Jerome/Gateway
Gateway - Summer 2019