The Great Pottery Throw Down: Native American Acoma Pottery & an Alabama Ring Bottle

March 1, 2021 7:30 AM - Season 4, Episode 8

It's an all-American-themed quarter-final and the remaining potters make Acoma pottery fired in cow dung and throw an Alabama ring bottle, for a place in the semi-final
posted by ellieBOA (6 comments total)

What do you all think of their Native American culture respect?
posted by ellieBOA at 7:31 AM on March 1, 2021

I thought they were doing real well until the cringe music in the background of the shot of them firing the pots in cow dung. Some of the designs were also cringe ("arrowhead for protection") but nothing that made me want to throw my computer at the wall? I thought it was nice that most of the potters consciously decided to use patterns that reflected their own lives rather than sad/offensive imitations of traditional patterns.

I am white though, so what do I know.

Alon and Sal leaving was a shocker . . . Sal especially. I pinned her to win the whole thing! She seemed to absolutely be the most knowledgeable and experienced of all the potters. A lesson on the importance of following the brief, I guess. The same thing has happened in GBBO, too.

Good on Peter. He's definitely been an underdog so it was great to see him do well.

At this point in the competition I've accepted that I do not have the eye to tell decent pottery apart from excellent pottery. I can tell when something has failed (like if the design is unfinished or the piece is broken) but when Rich and Keith are talking about the superiority of a particular piece's form I just take them at their word. Even though I don't know what they're talking about I still enjoy the enthusiasm though. It's a window into a whole other world of joy.
posted by Anonymous at 12:41 PM on March 1, 2021

Two potters AND my favourite two? No. I admit Alon deserved it this time, but I didn't understand why Hannah made it through instead of Sal.

I am also white, but it didn't strike me as obviously terrible.
posted by jeather at 1:09 PM on March 1, 2021

Ok thanks, didn’t want to miss something egregious! Also surprised it was Sal not Hannah, follow the brief! Saw it coming for Alon when last week he said ok now I can go back to making something different 😂
posted by ellieBOA at 10:38 PM on March 1, 2021

I had been rooting for Sal up to now, but she was not just off-brief but pretty dismissive of it (and by extension dismissive of the Acoma, in the sense that she couldn’t be bothered to make their traditional form this one time. )

Clever round bottles in the throw down!
posted by janell at 7:45 AM on March 3, 2021

Coming in way late on this- I think there were some very deliberate choices made by the producers that are not great. The Acoma Pueblo is a living, modern nation. Using grainy footage from the ‘60’s or whenever that was from and continuously talking about them in the past tense (“they wouldn’t have used a cheese grater!”-someone may be using one right now, because there are dozens of Acoma potters making traditional pottery and also innovative, new things) just serve to create this false sense of ancient, exotic unknowable other. I guarantee they could have found an Acoma potter to give a zoom (given the pandemic and cost) introduction to their techniques and decorative motifs and even the current work people are doing.

I forgive the individual potters not knowing much about Acoma but the producers should have done more work.

I actually think Alon’s folds look more like some things I’ve seen recently.
posted by Missense Mutation at 9:21 AM on November 19, 2022