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“When I first began to paint, I used to go to the ancient village and pick up
pieces of pottery and copy the designs. That is how I learned to paint. But now,
I just close my eyes and see designs and I paint them.”
-Nampeyo
"Mrs. Nampeyo, an acknowledged best Hopi indian woman Pottery maker 1st Mesa Hopiland, Ariz. Sichomovi."
R. Raffius, 1905 photo source and © Keystone-Mast Collection, UCR/California
Museum of Photography, University of California, Riverside
Above, an ancient Hopi Sikyatki Polychrome type jar with feather motifs, c. 1500-1550 A.D.
Photo source and © Bonhams
The remarkable stone-polishing on this jar was accomplished possibly using this very polishing stone or another one like it. When she was a young woman, Nampeyo found this centuries-old polishing stone in the ruins of the ancient Hopi pottery-making village of Sikyatki and used it to polish her own pottery for many years.
Later, she gave it as a special gift before her death in 1942 to her then-teenaged Great-Granddaughter, the now-also renowned Hopi potter, Dextra Quotskuyva Nampeyo (1928-2019). Dextra also used it on her pottery and many years later gifted it to her special close friend and ours, the late Santa Fe Native American Arts dealer, Martha Hopkins Struever (1931-2017) , who subsequently gave the stone to us.
A beautifully formed and finely painted Hopi “Sikyatki-Revival” style polychrome pottery seed jar by Nampeyo of Hano, c.1910
NAMPEYO OF HANO (1859-1942) was physically a fairly tiny woman. She stood just under five feet tall, but she is
an absolute giant in the history of Native American pottery. Her tremendous Hopi pottery pieces, like this wonderful “Sikyatki-Revival” style seed jar tower head and shoulders above everybody else’s.
This vessel is like a perfect small artistic jewel; compact and completely packed with exceptional beauty
and quality. This jar is a “textbook” Nampeyo piece, so to speak, in that it has virtually every single characteristic trait associated with Nampeyo’s work, from its “Sikyatki-Revival” style low-profile shape to the exceptional overall quality of the potting, design, painting, long-stroke stone polishing and beautifully executed firing to the numerous specific particulars of the painted design; a symmetrically-opposed, double four-part layout which is composed of two matching pairs of horizontally-opposed stylized bird wing and feather designs rendered in black
and in her characteristic “streaky” red paint.
Intersecting with and bisecting these paired designs is another pair of positive/negative banded designs.
The interplay between these various designs elements gives the overall design a marvelous complexity and sense
of layering. Additionally, the sophisticated and prominent use of “negative” space, specifically the four-part negative design which acts as a beautiful visual counterpart to the double four-part painted design and which imparts
a distinct and lovely sense of “motion” to the jar’s appearance.
The 45-degree tilted angle of the polished interior rim of the jar is another specific indication of Nampeyo’s hand as is the use of an unbroken framing line encircling the design field. Finally, another mention of the outstanding quality of the stone-polishing and firing is in order as the jar positively “glows” from these efforts and the jar also has an extraordinary soft feel and texture in the hand as well as a noteworthy “lightness” of weight due to its finely formed thin vessel walls unlike much Hopi pottery which is usually distinctly thicker-walled and heavier.
The jar measures a very nicely-sized 7” in diameter and is 4” in height. It is in excellent original vintage condition, especially when you consider its 115 or so years of age. There are some scrapes, and some minor abrasion paint losses but there are no cracks, no significant chips and there is no evidence at all of any restoration or overpainting under thorough ultraviolet light examination.
This exquisite pottery vessel is an outstanding example of the accomplished work of an extraordinary Native American artist and like its creator this jar might be somewhat small in stature, but it is tremendous in its artistic, historic and visual impact; truly a piece to be highly praised and highly prized.
Price $4,850
