Charles Loloma Hopi Modernist Style Pottery Glazed Platter Frank Lloyd Wright Price House Bartlesville

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This platter is most beautifully and elegantly formed with graceful thin outwardly flaring walls. On the inside

of the bowl there is a very subtle and lovely spiral design somewhat like an ancient Southwestern rock art petroglyph beginning in the center and radiating outwards to the rim of the bowl. The glaze is a subtle and slightly mottled mixture of greens, greys and browns and it has a wonderful texture which complements the spiral design perfectly. Under Phelan’s tutelege, Loloma had learned to be extremely meticulous regarding

the formulation of his glazes going to great and detailed efforts to mix the various compounds and minerals precisely to achieve a large variety of different surface textures and colors. We had the occasion a number of years ago to closely examine Loloma’s early studio notebooks which he maintained studiously throughout most of his early career and there were pages and pages devoted to precisely detailed potty glaze formulations, chemical firing compounds, clay mixtures and firing temperatures and times.

At left, Charles and Otellie Loloma in the School for American Craftsmen's ceramic studio in Crandall Barn, Alfred University, Alfred, NY, c. 1948. At center, Lloyd Kiva New's Kiva Craft Centeir, Fifth Street, Scottsdale, AZ, c. 1950's. At right, Charles and Otellie Loloma in their “Lolomaware” pottery studio and showroom at The Kiva Craft Center, Scottsdale, AZ, c. 1956

Left photo source and © Archives and Special Collections, RIT Library, Rochester Institute of Technology.

Center photo source and © Scottsdale Historical Society. Right photo source and © Museum of Northern Arizona Photo Archives.

“Our people have made pottery for generations, but it doesn’t stand up like modern chinaware…we hope to give it new life…by teaching our people about glazes…”

-Charles Loloma

At left, Charles Loloma’s enthusiastic pottery and jewelry clients and patrons, iconic American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright and his wife, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, 1952. The Wrights purchased Loloma’s pottery and jewelry for themselves and also recommended them to Wright’s architectural clients such as the Prices and others. Above center, Harold and Carolyn Price's 1954 Frank Lloyd Wright "Hillside House" in Bartlesville, Oklahoma where this platter was on display.

At right, Frank Lloyd Wright's only skyscraper, The Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, c. 1955-56.

Left photo source unknown. Top center photo source and © Larry Speck. Right photo source and © franklloydwright.org

Charles Loloma Pottery Platter, c. 1955 and Charles Loloma

Tufa-Cast Silver Cuff Bracelet, c. 1960

Closely examine these two Charles Loloma pieces created in different mediums just a few years apart.

The organic, earthy, landscape-like textures, surface undulations and irregularities, and the unique and lovely manner in which these catch the light are remarkably similar and equally attractive.

An exceptional Charles Loloma Modernist-style pottery

platter purchased for and displayed in the Frank Lloyd Wright Hillside House in Bartlesville, OK, c.1955

ex: Harold C. and Carolyn Price Collection, Bartlesville, Oklahoma

Years before he became a ground-breaking jeweler, Hopi artist Charles Loloma (1921-1991) was a highly-accomplished pottery maker. From 1947-1949 he and his wife, Otellie Pasiyava Loloma (1921-1993), attended The School for American Craftsmen at Alfred University in New York on a scholarship and fell under the influence of the school’s exceptionally talented master ceramicist and pottery instructor, Lynn Lovejoy Phelan. Together, the Lolomas started making a revolutionary never before seen and completely non-traditional Modernistic form of Hopi pottery which was strongly influenced by Japanese and Chinese methods and traditions.

Eventually, the attractiveness of Loloma’s pottery got him into jewelry making in a somewhat circuitous fashion. In the mid-to-late 1950’s, the Lolomas had a small studio and shop in Lloyd Kiva New’s Kiva Craft Center in downtown Scottsdale, Arizona which was sort of an artist’s co-operative combining living space, studio space and showroom space to a number of talented artists. At that time, Charles and Otellie had already acquired a considerable reputation for their fine “Lolomaware” ceramics and were starting to attract a lot of attention at their small shop in the Kiva Craft Center. One of those whose attention was fascinated was Loloma’s neighbor and fellow artist at Kiva Craft, the revolutionary modernist jewelry maker, H. Fred Skaggs who was so taken with the Lolomas pottery that he offered to trade Charles jewelry-making lessons in exchange for pieces of pottery. Fred Skaggs became Loloma’s mentor in jewelry-making and Loloma always later credited him with being the single biggest influence in his subsequent jewelry career.

Wright’s daughter, Frances Wright Caroe had been an instructor of the Lolomas at Alfred University in the

late 1940’s and after their move to Scottsdale, two of the Lolomas neighbors in the Kiva Craft Complex were Wright-trained architects from Taliesin West, Frank LLoyd Wright’s architectural complex and winter headquarters in Scottsdale, AZ. Additionally, beginning around 1955-56, another extremely influential individual patron in Wright’s orbit who had become quite enamored with Loloma’s artistic talents was none other than Ogilvanna Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright’s wife, who in 1956 ordered and regularly began to wear several of Loloma’s early jewelry pieces. Whether Olgivanna Lloyd Wright was introduced to Charles Loloma by her husband’s architectural clients, the Prices or whether it was she or her husband who might have originally introduced the Prices to Loloma, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright was a big fan and enthusiastic buyer and promoter of Charles Loloma’s pottery and later, jewelry work.

The platter measures an impressively-sized 11 3/4” in diameter and it is 2” in height. It is in remarkably excellent original condition, with no damages or wear in evidence, and particularly so in light of its now 70 or so years of age and it is most beautifully signed on the bottom in a particularly prominent and elegant rendition of what would eventually become Charles Loloma’s famous eleven-stroke hand-engraved jewelry signature, one of the most distinctive and beautiful artist’s signatures of all time, in our view.

This exceptional and elegant platter is one of America’s greatest modern-day ceramics made by one of America’s greatest Modern-day Native American artists for display in one of America’s greatest Modern homes designed by America’s greatest 20th Century architect. As such, it’s an unparalleled piece, intersecting and combining fine art, fine artistry and extraordinary American cultural history.

SOLD

The design of the outside exterior of the platter is almost as interesting as the design of the inside. Here Loloma has used a series of closely spaced concentric dark brown circles extending all the way upwards to the dark brown painted rim from the bowl’s circular base. The textural and visual contrast between these two different design fields, the glazed interior of the bowl and the unglazed and incised exterior provides a dynamic and appealing visual tension. The overall design effect here is extremely harmonious and very organic and natural with a distinctly modern yet completely classic presentation. The subtleties of color and texture in both the glazed and unglazed sections of then platter are quite remarkable and reminiscent in some ways of the colors, texturesand overall appearance of Loloma's Hopi home earth and landscape. all in all, it’s a particularly masterful and incredibly well-made piece, Modernist in its appearance, yet timeless and ancient in its feel as well.

One can easily see why the former original owners of the bowl, Harold C. Price Jr. and Carolyn Price purchased this ceramic treasure to help grace and accentuate their magnificent new Frank Lloyd Wright Modernist home,

the famous 1954 Hillside House in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Harold C. Price, Jr. was the son and heir of Harold Charles (H.C.) Price, Sr. (1888-1962) for whom Wright later in 1955-56 built the spectacular and unique Price Tower office building also in Bartlesville which is the only Frank Lloyd Wright skyscraper anywhere in the world. There is the distinct possibility that rather than the Prices happenstance purchasing some Loloma pottery from Loloma in Scottsdale where their father had a home and where they were regular winter visitors that this bowl and other pottery pieces might have been commissioned directly from Loloma by Frank Lloyd Wright himself on

the Price's behalf as there were a great many artistic and personal connections between the two men.

"The single spiral is the symbol of Ho-bo-bo, the twister who manifests his power by the whirlwind."

Ancient rock art petroglyph near the village of Keams Canyon below the Hopi First Mesa.