Helen Cordero is credited with creating the first storyteller in 1964 to honor her grandfather.

Most notable is the storyteller, a grandfather or grandmother figure with 'babies' perched on it. An astute observer will find angels, nativities, cowboys, tourist caricatures, snakes, dinosaurs, turtles, goats, two-headed opera singers, clowns, tattooed strongmen, Moorish nuns and even mermaids in the Cochiti pottery pantheon, most produced only since the early 1960's and based on characters described in Cochiti's oral history.Ī few modern potters make traditional styled pots with black and red flowers, animals, clouds, lightning and geometric designs but most Cochiti pottery artists now create figurines. The tribe's contact with the ringmaster, trapeze artists, opera singers, sideshow 'freaks' and exotic animals paved the way for a variety of new figural subjects.

Legend has it that a Ringling Brothers Circus train broke down near Cochiti Pueblo in the 1920's. Then production followed the market into more conventional shapes. Then Cochiti potters were among the first to enter the tourist market and they produced many whimsical figures into the early 1900's. That problem left when the Spanish left in 1820 but the fantastic array of figurines created by Cochiti potters was essentially dormant until the railroad arrived. Many of these were condemned as idols and destroyed by the Spaniards. In protohistoric times, human effigy pots, animals, duck canteens and bird shaped pitchers with beaks as spouts were common productions of the Cochiti potters.

Cochiti storyteller