Cleveland Museum of Art

Canteen

Date

1870

Medium

ceramic, slip

Culture

Native North America, Southwest, Arizona, Pueblo, Hopi

Department

Art of the Americas

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Since the 1500s, Hopi women made big-bellied canteens, based on Spanish prototypes, and used them to carry water. By the late 1800s, canteens became popular with Euro-American tourists, who increasingly flocked to the Southwest in search of encounters with “exotic” Native American cultures. Thus, Hopi artists embellished their wares to improve their appeal, here with graceful abstract forms.

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