Margaret Tafoya was born in 1904 in Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico. She learned the art of pottery making from childhood as she was born into a long line of Native American Pueblo potters. Her mother, Serafina Gutierrez Tafoya, was her greatest mentor. The pair became known for making unusually large pots. Margaret meticulously hand-coiled all of her pots and used only clay that was dug from the ancestral land of the Santa Clara. She used an intaglio method to carve her designs into her pottery. After months of drying her pottery, she fired it in an open fire with natural fuels finishing with rubbing the surface with a stone to create her hallmark luster.