food-bowl

Updated: July 11, 2025

The water jar, like the food-bowl, is a conspicuous household article; for which reason the Zuñi woman expends all her ability to render them handsome. Judging by this, the desire to decorate the water-vessel with paint, like its constant companion the food-bowl, would early lead to the attempt to make its surface smooth.

Frank Hamilton Cushing - A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuñi Culture Growth. : Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 467-522

Food-bowl. Water-jar. An explanation must be sought in various directions, and once found will be useful in guiding to an understanding of the symbolic element in Pueblo ceramic art. I asked the Indian women, when I saw them making these little spaces with great care, why they took so much pains to leave them open.

Frank Hamilton Cushing - A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuñi Culture Growth. : Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 467-522

By lingering steps there was early developed a method of building up vessels by a process differing in part from the spiral. As the parching-bowl had been evolved from the roasting-tray, so, we may infer, the food-bowl was suggested by the hemispherical food-trencher of wicker-work.

Frank Hamilton Cushing - A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuñi Culture Growth. : Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 467-522