Isleta
$ 875
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Polychrome storyteller with three children and polar bear
4.75 in L by 3.75 in W by 4.75 in H
Condition: Excellent
Signature: Stella Teller Isleta, N. Mex.
Date Created: 2021
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Stella Teller
Isleta
The daughter of Rudy and Felicita Jojola, Stella Teller was born at Isleta Pueblo in 1929. It wasn't until about 1962 that she first appeared in the marketplace with her earliest pieces. Since then she has earned numerous awards at the SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market, the Eight Northern Pueblos Arts and Crafts Show and the New Mexico State Fair for her distinctive storytellers, nativities and non-traditional jars (canteens in particular).
Stella's pieces are notable for their "sleeping eyes," overall light-blue to white coloring and often have strings of heishi beads either inlaid or painted on. Some of her pieces have found their way into the collections of the Peabody Museum at Harvard College in Boston, the Folk Museum in Berlin, Germany, and into the Wright Collection, Walton-Anderson Collection and the personal collections of Frank Kinsel and Peter B. Carl.
Her favorite designs include clouds, rain, turtles, Pueblo dancers and kiva steps. Her favorite styles include storytellers, Nativities, jars, bowls, wedding vases, canteens and effigies.
Stella has passed her knowledge on to her daughters: Chris, Mona, Robin and Lynette, each of whom has gone on to become award-earning potters in their own right.
Isleta Pueblo
San Agustin de la Isletas Mission
Isleta Pueblo was founded in the 1300's. Archaeologists have put forth various ideas as to where the people came from with some scholars saying they migrated north from Mogollon/Mimbres settlements to the south while others say they migrated southwestward from either Chaco Canyon in the 1100's and 1200's or from the Four Corners area in the 1200's and 1300's. Their Tiwa language is shared with nearby Sandia Pueblo and a very similar tongue is spoken to the north at Taos and Picuris Pueblos. The two dialects are sometimes referred to as Southern and Northern Tiwa.
When the Spanish arrived in the area they named the pueblo "Isleta" (meaning: island). The residents were relatively accommodating to the Spanish priests when compared to the reception the same priests got in other areas of Nuevo Mexico (making Isleta something of an "island of safety" for the Spanish in an ocean of hostility). When the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 happened, Isleta either couldn't or wouldn't participate in the rebellion. When the Spanish governor left Santa Fe he went to Isleta and gathered his troops. None wanted to go back and fight so when they left and headed south, many Isletans went south to the El Paso area with them. Others fled to the Hopi settlements in Arizona and returned after the fighting was clearly over, many with Hopi spouses. When the Spanish returned in 1682 they found the Isleta mission church burned and the main structure was being used as a livestock pen. When the Spanish returned in force in 1692 they found Isleta empty and burned. The governor ordered the pueblo be rebuilt and resettled so residents were brought in from Taos and Picuris to the north and from Ysleta del Sur to the south, near El Paso. By 1720 a new, grander mission had been rebuilt on the foundations of the first.
Over the next century dissident members of the Laguna and Acoma Pueblo communities migrated to Isleta. While they were welcomed into the main Isleta pueblo at first, friction developed over the years until in the 1800's, the small communities of Oraibi and Chicale were established and most of the newcomers moved to one or the other.
The advent of the railroad in New Mexico was almost the end of the Isleta community as so many of the men went to work for the railroad. While the remaining residents managed to hold on to some of their social and religious practices, other elements of their culture almost disappeared, pottery making being one of those traditions that barely survived.
Today, making pottery the traditional way is practiced by only a few potters and their close family members.
Storytellers
Pueblos: Cochiti, Jemez, Acoma, Isleta, Santa Clara
Cochiti Pueblo
Jemez Pueblo
Acoma Pueblo
Historically, clay figures have been present in the Pueblo pottery tradition for most of the last thousand years. However, figures and effigies were denounced as "works of the devil" by the Spanish missionaries in New Mexico between 1540 and 1820. Before and after that time the art of making figurative sculpture flourished, especially at Cochiti Pueblo. The forms of animals, birds and caricatures of outsiders and, more recently, of images of mothers and grandfathers telling stories and singing to children have multiplied.
The "storyteller" is an important role in the tribe as parents are often too busy working and raising kids to pass on their tribal histories and the Native American people did not have a written language to record anything for posterity. The closest thing they had to a written language was pottery and the designs that decorated that pottery. So the storyteller's role was to preserve and retell and pass down the oral history of his people. In most tribes that role was fulfilled by men.
The first real storyteller figure was created in 1964 by Cochiti Pueblo potter Helen Cordero in memory of her grandfather, Santiago Quintana. She gathered her clay from a secret sacred place on the lands of her pueblo. Then she hand-coiled, hand painted and fired that first storyteller figure the traditional way: in the ground. Helen never used any molds or kilns to make her pottery.
Helen's creation struck a chord throughout all the pueblos as the storyteller is a figure central to all their societies. Most tribes also have the figure of the Singing Maiden in their pantheon and in many cases, the mix of Singing Maiden and Storyteller has blurred some lines in the pottery world. Today, as many as three hundred potters in thirteen pueblos have created storytellers, and their storytellers are not only men and women, but also Santa's, mudheads, koshares, bears, owls and other animals, sometimes encumbered with children numbering more than one hundred! Each potter has also customized their storyteller figures to more closely reflect the styles and dress of their own tribes, sometimes even of their own clans.
Teller Family Tree
Disclaimer: This "family tree" is a best effort on our part to determine who the potters are in this family and arrange them in a generational order. The general information available is questionable so we have tried to show each of these diagrams to living members of each family to get their input and approval, too. This diagram is subject to change should we get better info.
- Marcellina Jojola (c. 1860s-)
- Emily Lente Carpio (c. 1880s-)
- Felecita Jojola (c. 1900s-) & Rudy Jojola
- Stella Teller (1929-) and Louis Teller
- Chris Teller Lucero (1956-)
- Marie (Robin) Teller Velardez (1954-) and Ray Velardez
- Lesley Teller Velardez (1973-)
- Mona Blythe Teller (1960-)
- Christopher Teller
- Nicol Teller Blythe (1978-)
- Lynette Teller (1963-)
- Stella Teller (1929-) and Louis Teller
- Felecita Jojola (c. 1900s-) & Rudy Jojola
Some of the above info is drawn from Southern Pueblo Pottery, 2000 Artist Biographies, by Gregory Schaaf, © 2002, Center for Indigenous Arts & Studies
Other info is derived from personal contacts with family members and through interminable searches of the Internet and cross-examination of the data found.
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