This jar is typical of the black-and-white pottery for which Lucy Martin Lewis was famous. She developed this approach, with slender black lines decorating a white clay body, based on the eleventh-century Mimbres style of pottery native to the area. Lewis was familiar with this style because tiny shards of such pots covered much of the ground on the reservation.

Acoma potters generally work with a special, kaolin type of clay-dug from a secret site that is considered sacred. This clay turns white when fired but is harder to work and more fragile than other local clays.

The basic process of making this pot was the same as the one used at San Ildefonso, where María Montoya Martínez worked. Potters build up coils of clay, smooth, polish, and then fire their vessels. However, in this case the outside of the pot was covered with white slip, after which Lewis painted the complex network of lines, using a yucca-frond brush and black pigment. She worked freehand, with no preparatory drawings, planning the brush strokes in her mind and then applying them quickly.

This jar has an especially pleasing quality because of the repeated geometric pattern (an eight-pointed star), combined with the slight irregularities within each line. Although the outside of the jar is smooth, it has a dramatic, overall visual texture, set off handsomely by the thin slice of white at the base and a solid black stripe running around its lip.