Highlights from Martha Lanman Cusick`s collection:
One tall black pot is a contemporary work by Margaret Tafoya. Cusick describes her as ``the current matriarch of potters, still living at 80 in Santa Clara Pueblo.`` Next to that pot rests another black vessel, created by Tafoya`s mother, Serafina. ``It has a bear paw impressed on it, a symbol that all their water jars carry,`` Cusick explains.
All but one of the row of clay creatures in Cusick`s living room is from the Cochiti Pueblo, south of Santo Domingo, N.M. ``They have a long tradition of animalitos,`` Cusick says. Some of the animal figures have been ceremonially fed and still contain ancient corn.
On another shelf rest a number of Zuni Pueblo kiva, or ceremonial pots, with sacred corn meal in them. Cusick explains their designs: ``Animals of the four directions, with a star for the heavens. All the signs on them mean something`` and usually relate to water, corn or planting, she adds. The recurring feather symbol represents the snake and probably is related to the Aztec mythic figure, Quetzalcoatl.
A group of figures that look like human cartoons in clay are from the Cochiti people. ``We think they represent circus people that came up from New Spain (Mexico) in the early 1800s,`` she says.
A figure of a Zuni deer has a label stating that it had been donated by Mrs. Gen. Geo. P. Buell to the Tennessee Historical Society in 1871. ``People think of these things as only tourist things,`` says Cusick of the pots. ``But there weren`t a lot of tourists in 1881.``
Among the pots is an early 19th Century woven Indian sash, made with large ``pony`` beads, that came from the collection of a wealthy Englishman who collected Indian art long before the museums in the United States became interested in it, Cusick says. His collection of early Eastern woodlands materials was auctioned three years ago at Sotheby Park Bernet, where Cusick acquired some pieces.
But new collectors shouldn`t despair that there is little out there to be ``discovered``: Cusick possesses an important Hopi jar that was found in an attic in New Jersey. She purchased it through a dealer.