The history of American ceramics is far better documented than that of other crafts, yet many untold stories remain. Unearthed: The NEHMA Ceramics Collection & the Woman Behind It tells some of those stories in the course of presenting a broader, richer history of the American ceramics tradition than any previously available.

The history of the American West is filled with violent conflicts between settlers and Native peoples, social unrest from waves of migration, and never-ending battles over the region’s mineral, energy, and water resources. Despite these conflictual encounters, the West became an area for the merging of robust ceramic traditions, which were themselves shaped by the physical landscape and peoples of the region. Through conquest, colonization, and migration, Euro-American, Native North American, East Asian, African American, and Latin American ceramics converged and profoundly shaped the West’s artistic legacy. As a result, ceramics is notable for sustaining a complex yet inclusive narrative about art in the twentieth century American West.

Unearthed offers an unusual perspective by highlighting the wide-ranging influence of collector and benefactor Nora (“Noni”) Eccles Treadwell Harris, whose comprehensive vision of American ceramics came to fruition in a vast network of influence that reached from the intellectual circles of San Francisco to the Pueblo matriarchs of the Southwest. This long overdue publication provides a more accurate view of how wide-ranging and diverse this field has been, even prior to the twentieth century, and up to the present day.

 With substantial essays by Matthew Limb and Billie Sessions, and illustrated biographical catalogue entries on more than two hundred artists, Unearthed makes clear that the ripples of Noni’s legacy will be felt for generations.