Mary Colter’s Mimbreño China Designs
Mimbres bowl with rabbit, c. AD 1000 - 1150 (Dallas Museum of Art)
In addition to her architecture and interior design work at hospitality company Fred Harvey, Mary E. J. Colter (1869 – 1958) also helped design a china pattern. The Mimbreño china pattern was used in the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway’s Super Chief dining cars for thirty-four years beginning in 1937. The designs were based on pottery decorations made by people in the Mimbres River Valley in southern New Mexico and in southwestern Arizona from the late tenth century to 1130 A.D. The pottery featured both geometric patterns and whimsical figures of animals painted in black and red.
Mimbres bowl with bighorn sheep, c. AD 1000 - 1150 (Dallas Museum of Art)
When Colter was asked to produce an “Indian-themed” china pattern for use on the Super Chief-Two’s service from Chicago to Los Angeles, she thought of the Mimbres pots. Colter had previously duplicated some of the Mimbres designs on the walls of her 1932 Desert View Watchtower building. According to Colter’s secretary Sadie Rubins (who did the leg work of locating examples of the pottery), Colter visited museum collections to further study examples of the prehistoric vessels before creating thirty-seven designs based on them.
Colter turned her sketches over to artist and ceramicist Guy Cowan who translated them into patterns suitable for production on china at the Syracuse China Company. Then Colter wielded the blue pencil, approving or modifying the resulting patterns. She insisted that the patterns look like they could be painted with a twig with a chewed end, the tool it was believed the original potters used. The patterns would be produced in black and in red on white dishware.
Pieces of the china pattern designed by Colter (Grand Canyon National Park Museum Collection)
For his 1992 book on the Mimbreño china pattern, Richard Luckin interviewed Max Palmer who described himself as a “cub” working at china distributor and designer E. A. Hinrichs in 1936. Palmer’s duties included taking notes during discussions of the pattern designs. “‘Miss Colter knew what she wanted and she generally got it,’” Palmer remembered. “‘She had the respect of the people she worked for as well as those who were serving her.’”
“‘Mary Colter….was properly demanding and fully knowledgeable about the Mimbres and their pottery,’” Palmer told Luckin. “‘All respected her authority in this area and bent to her dictates completely. While she may have been critical of someone’s interpretations or attempts to develop her wants, she was always kind in her criticism of their efforts, and allowed them a second chance to correct what they had done.’”
While the railway stopped using this pattern in 1971 when the Super Chief service was discontinued, the 1937 china pattern based on the tenth century pots are still being reproduced. Today, instead of a stamp on each piece reading “Made expressly for Santa Fe dining car service,” the wording includes reference to the pieces being reproductions.
“‘Our Mimbres artists had a keen sense of humor,’” read a 1937 booklet about the dining car’s new china. “‘They dearly loved a joke. And they saw to it that these jokes were circulated. For they pictured them on their pottery, and today…we can still laugh at them.’”
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Sources:
Arnold Berke, Mary Colter: Architect of the Southwest. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002.
Luckin, Richard W. Mimbres to Mimbreño: A Study of Santa Fe's Famous China Pattern. Golden, Colorado: RK Publishing, 1992.
Jude Isabella, “On the Trail of the Mimbres,” Archaeology, May/June 2013: 36-40.
Hotel Monthly. "Food Service on the Santa Fe's New Streamlined Trains." September 1938: 17-19.