Garnet Pavatea Hopi Polychrome Pottery Pictorial Bird Jar

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An exceptional, vintage Hopi Polychrome pottery pictorial bird jar by Garnet Pavatea, c.1960’s

One of our very favorite Hopi potters of the 20th Century is the great Garnet Pavatea a.k.a. “Flower Girl” (1915-1981). Garnet's pottery, like her personality was intense; strong, decisive and powerful. Her pieces are always very beautifully formed and boldly and distinctively decorated.

Garnet was a woman and an artist of strong opinions, she notably carried on a running feud of sorts over the years with various members of the Nampeyo family over their continued complaints that she was using what they viewed as “their” proprietary family pottery designs such as the “Eagle-Tail” design, the “Migration” pattern design and the “Bird” design as seen on this jar. Garnet famously and loudly responded to anyone who would listen her view that all Hopis owned and thus were all entitled to use all Hopi designs and that these designs were not and should not be considered the property of any one particular Hopi family.

That said, Garnet and the original Nampeyo did have very distinct artistic similarities and approaches; both potters were superb technical pottery makers, their pieces are always beautifully formed, finely polished and precisely painted. In some ways, in our view, Garnet though born some 60 years after Nampeyo, Garnet is her more direct and original artistic descendant in a spiritual sense, more so even than some of Nampeyo’s own daughters in that Nampeyo’s daughters basically followed a design sense that Nampeyo created, but Garnet pursued a more original and personal combination of traditional pottery making, shaping and forming with her own distinctively Modernist original design sense as Nampeyo did herself very early in the 20th Century.

Garnet Pavatea painting a pottery jar, c. 1950's.

Right photo source and © Frashers Fotos.

This wonderful, charming polychrome pictorial “Bird” jar is completely typical of Garnet’s excellent and intense work; beautifully formed and boldly painted with larger stylized bird and feather hook designs. This globular shape of the jar, the flat bottomed form and the paired prominent profiled bird designs are all derived from some Hopi Walpi polychrome pottery vessels, an offshoot of the legendary ancient Hopi pottery type Siktyaki polychrome. Nampeyo made a number of similar pictorial Walpi-style bird jars in this size, shape and style two of which are shown below and Garnet later stylized the design a bit farther by adding a second orange/red background slip color around the vessel’s neck to the usual plain yellow.

The jar measures a very nicely-sized 5 1/2" in height and it is 7" in diameter at its widest should point. The jar is in remarkably excellent almost like new original condition particularly for its 60-70 or so years of age. There are only a few tiny dings or abrasions, but nothing of any consequence at all. A thorough examination of the vessel under Ultraviolet light reveals no evidence of any restoration or overpainting anywhere. The jar is properly signed “Garnet Pavatea” in her customary all capital letters signature on the bottom. This superlative jar by this distinguished and highly-accomplished historic Hopi artist would be a fine and striking addition to any collection.

SOLD

Above left and right, two historic Hopi pottery jars with similar "bird" pictorials by Nampeyo c. 1900-1910.