# Parrot Olla

- By: Pueblo of Acoma (Pueblo of Acoma, New Mexico)
- Date: c. 1880s
- Medium: Earthenware and slip
- Classification: Ceramics
- Dimensions: 41.5 × 44.9 × 45.5 cm (16 3/8 × 17 11/16 × 17 15/16 in.)
- Culture: Pueblo of Acoma
- Credit line: Ethel T. Scarborough and Major Acquisitions funds; Gladys N. Anderson Endowment Fund
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/189293)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/b4a219be-d650-106e-d3d7-6de7325dcc50/full/!1920,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

In the American Southwest, there is an Indian ceramic tradition that began to take form in the early centuries A.D. and has continued unbroken to the present time. Characterized by its many superbly varied styles, the art has been sustained by diverse Pueblo peoples and some of their neighbors, whose ancient and more recent settlements have long been established in the arid regions of Arizona and New Mexico. Ceramic artists of the Acoma Pueblo, west of Albuquerque, produced an especially distinguished series of vessels during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This large, rounded, and beautifully proportioned vessel is covered by exuberant, colorful figures representing macaws and other birds, double rainbows, flowers, and plants. The fluid, lively pattern breaks from the disciplined, abstract symmetry that widely prevails in Puebloan tradition, possibly reflecting the influence of designs from Mexico or perhaps the printed or embroidered textiles from the eastern United States that reached New Mexico beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. Nevertheless, traditional indigenous perceptions remained in play, for macaws have been featured for centuries in Puebloan…

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0