Featured Unusual pot with spiders, age, origin and use?

"Daddy Long Legs"........? (with short legs)

 

Gee...maybe they're not spiders after all?

 

It's a mystery!

 

Insignificant cracking from that extra glob of clay drying out and pulling moister from the surrounding area?

 

The closest I see is North American Hopi Indian. Their pots/jugs/canteens are the closest to resembling yours that I've seen. What I've read, they were in Canada 500-1300 years ago. It also could have been other later tribes native to your area. Just a guess, don't giggle. Another example of the more you know the more you find out you don't know.

 

I think they are tics...the bad kind that sneak up on you in a grassy field,,,,,,then kill you , and leave your body for the wolves....

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nahhhh, just kidding !

 

Mike Mac Dnald: It appears you are confusing the Hopi tribe with the Navajo. The Hopi are a puebloan tribe, that has been in the Southwest since at least 500 B.C., believed to have migrated there from the Mexico area. The Navajo are a totally unrelated Athabascan tribe, who migrated to the Southwest, from Canada, around the 1600s.

The pot in question doesn't remotely resemble traditional Hopi pottery. It does, however, look like it could be Navajo, who traditionally made a brown, pinon pine pitch coating, on their pots. The best way to tell, is to rub the bottom with your thumb, and see if, when warmed, it smells of pinon pine. The Navajo are the only tribe that used this particular coating on their pottery, which was applied as the hot pots were taken out of the firing.

And I think the listing has taken an unnecessary spin into
the "spider theory." It probably is just a decoration, possibly a flower. The main thing is to look at the clay, which is correct for a traditional Navajo piece, and determine whether or not that is a pitch coating.

 

Thank you, lots a great info! I will look closer at the clay and see if I can distinguish a pine smell when heated. I will report back!

 

@Taupou I just took another look and rubbed the base to create heat (like I do when testing for a Bakelite smell ). It definitely has a sweet smell, almost sap-like. I am not sure exactly what pinon pine smells like but the glaze does smell like a tree to me.