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An extremely large contemporary Hopi Sikyatki-style four-color polychrome pottery low-profile “Flying Saucer” jar by Michael Peter Hawley, Scottsdale, Arizona, 1987
THIS PIECE DOESN’T LOOK A DAY OVER 400 YEARS OLD, DOES IT? That’s because the late Scottsdale, Arizona pottery artist Michael Peter Hawley (1948-2012) was a true and incredibly innovative certified ceramic genius. After years of fascination with ancient Native American pottery types of the prehistoric Southwest, he taught himself through a painstaking process of trial and error how to make a number of them, including the greatest and most difficult of them all, the fabled Hopi Sikyatki Polychrome (c.1375-1625 A.D.). He did this not in a modern, shortcut replica sort of way using contemporary materials and modern methods and rote copying of old designs, but, instead, in the exact same painstaking, natural, traditional, ancient way using exclusively native clays which he ground by hand with hand-made stone tools, using only natural paint pigments which he found and made himself from the same indigenous local minerals and plants used by the ancient potters and which he then applied in the age-old manner with no previously sketched designs using only a hand-cut and chewed yucca fiber brush and his inspired mind and experience to guide him.
Hawley also never fired his ceramics in modern high-tech electric kilns. Instead, he laboriously constructed his own handmade firing pits using only the technology available to the ancients from the 14th to 17th centuries, in the case of this particular Hopi Sikyatki-style jar, fueled by 1200-plus degree hot-burning Lignite coal mined from the exact same coal deposits the ancient Hopi used on the walls of the Hopi Antelope Mesa. The result, as you see here, is nothing short of astonishing; a finely-made and extravagantly-decorated full-blown Hopi Sikyatki-style low-profile “Flying Saucer” jar made some three and a half centuries after Sikyatki pottery ceased being made.
At left, Nampeyo of Hano making Sikyatki-Revival style pottery, c. 1905. At right, Michael Hawley making a Sikyatki-Revival "Chakoptewa Polychrome" pottery jar, c. 1985.
Left photo source and © Suduva. Right photo source and © Michael Hawley "Chakoptewa Polychrome; The Re-Emergence of a Lost Art"
Above, a four-color Sikyatki Polychrome pottery jar with abstract bird and feather designs, c. 1450-1500 A.D.
Right photo source and © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The famous Sikyatki “Flying Saucer” low-profile jar form has long been admired around the world as one of the most beautiful and excruciatingly difficult of all Southwestern Pueblo pottery forms to make successfully due to its extreme low swooping overhanging shape, thin walls and very large size. This jar is completely authentic in every single detail, but it is only four decades old, instead of four centuries. Michael Hawley's pieces are inspired, completely original pieces of contemporary ceramic art informed by ancient tradition and custom. They are not in any way copies or replicas. The great late19th and 20th Century Hopi pottery Matriarch, Nampeyo of Hano (1858-1942) would three centuries after Sikyatki pottery had died out, also “revive” and modify ancient Sikyatki stylized bird and feather designs like these in her own unique manner which she would feature prominently in her and her family’s pottery continuing on to the present day.
The jar measures an extremely large and dramatic 18 1/2" in diameter and is a swoopingly low mere 6 3/4" in height.
It has a complex and beautifully-detailed four-color polychrome design of stylized bird, feather, tail and geometric designs rendered in four symmetrical sections of paired and horizontally-opposed designs. Michael also employed extensive "stippling" and sgraffito etching techniques in certain sections of the painted designs to a beautiful, visual and textural effect. The jar is properly signed and dated 1987 on the bottom with Michael Hawley’s adopted Hopi name "Chakoptewa" and "87MY2" above the artist's smoking pipe insignia. Michael Hawley always referred to these pots as "Chakoptewa Polychromes” after his adopted Hopi name of "Chakoptewa". The jar is in remarkably excellent original condition with no restoration or overpaint in evidence under UV light examination. There is only the tiniest chip and the slightest scratch here and there. On a jar of this size, complexity of design and difficulty in manufacture, this piece is in thoroughly excellent, almost unbelievable original condition indeed.
The overall quality of the potting, painting, stone polishing and coal-firing on this jar are all worth mentioning specifically here as it is all completely extraordinary as is the bottom of the jar which is almost like an entire abstract work of art in itself with its marvelous pattern of yellowish-white firing "blushes" on the yellow clay from the intense heat from the coal firing process. The degree of all-out aesthetic and technical excellence and expertise demonstrated in the making of this vessel is nothing short of astounding. Michael Hawley was a longtime friend and professional colleague of ours and we have owned perhaps a dozen in all of his large Sikyatki-style jars over the past thirty-plus years and have seen perhaps fifteen to twenty others and this particular jar is among the very finest of all of these in our personal opinions. Michael got this one just right!
During the 1980's, Michael Hawley had a series of completely sold-out, lines around the block one-man pottery shows at the prestigious Gallery 10 in Scottsdale, Arizona and the equally prominent Elaine Horwitch Galleries in Scottsdale and Santa Fe, New Mexico. When you look at outstanding original pottery art pieces such as this one, it is very easy to understand why this was the case.
Michael Hawley self-produced a short film in the 1980‘s documenting the entire process of him making one of
these large Sikyatki-style pottery jars from start to finish, from finding and processing the raw clay and the paint pigment materials to preparing the yucca fiber brush to shaping, sanding, polishing, painting and ultimately firing the jar. This is a thoroughly fascinating and remarkable presentation which simply has to be seen to be believed. To view a video of this film, please click here.
That’s pretty much all there is to say here. This jar is a remarkable and powerful work of art, a true Southwestern pottery treasure and an extraordinary and compelling modern day link to our deep ancient American past.
Price $3,150
