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The biggest and best Hopi pottery jar we have ever seen by Paqua Naha (Original Frogwoman), c.1930

ex: Juan Lorenzo (J.L.) Hubbell family collection, Arizona

Coming in at a completely colossal 24 1/2" in height, not only is this Hopi cylinder jar by a very considerable degree the single largest pottery jar we have ever seen by The Original Frogwoman, Paqua Naha, it is the single largest Hopi pottery jar that we have ever seen period full stop in our 40-plus years of buying, selling, collecting and studying historic Hopi pottery, anywhere, in any private collection or in any museum.

Admittedly, this is a very large statement indeed, but if you have seen anything larger somewhere we’d sure like to know about it. But large in itself is only part of the equation here, it’s also gotta be beautiful and well made too to be a masterpiece and in this regard, this jar is also the most beautiful and well made Paqua Naha pottery piece we have ever seen, in our fairly experienced opinions and we have seen and had a few. And again, if you’ve seen a more beautiful or better made one somewhere, we’d sure like to know about it.

Paqua Naha (1890-1955) was one of the most accomplished and creative Hopi potters of the early to mid 20th Century. Although she was some 30 years younger, she was a close friend, colleague, contemporary and artistic competitor to the great Nampeyo and like Nampeyo the founder of a great Hopi pottery-making family dynasty herself which is still going strong today. But Paqua had a distinctly different potting and design style than Nampeyo. Paqua’s vessel shapes were somewhat less daring and adventurous than Nampeyo’s and her painted designs tended to be a bit heavier, chunkier with larger blocks of color, less abstract and somewhat differently laid out in their design fields, but still very sophisticated, complex and extremely well rendered. Girl could definitely paint!

Our Original “Magnificent Seven" has now become "The Magnificent Eight."

The seven Hopi jars shown above are the largest and finest historic Hopi pottery pieces

we have ever had over the past 40-plus years. All seven of these were made by Nampeyo, this eighth

Paqua Naha jar is the first piece by Paqua Naha to join this distinguished group.

c

Two of the most prominent Southwestern outlets for the display and/or sale of large Hopi"Trophy" type pottery jars such as this one. At left, The Fred Harvey Company's Indian Building Trading Post at The Hotel Alvarado, Albuquerque, NM, c. 1906. At right, the old J.L. Hubbell Trading Post in Winslow, AZ.

Left photo source and © The Fred Harvey Company. Right photo source and © Wikipedia.

There has been some various speculative discussion over the years by certain of our colleagues and other academics in the field regarding the possibility that a large Hopi pottery upright “Cylinder” style jar such as this might have been made on special order for use as an umbrella stand in a trading post or hotel. We have seen no evidence of this at all, photographic or by usage wear patterns, on this jar or on the two or three other similar though considerably smaller ones we have seen over the years. Rather, we believe that these various extra-large sized Hopi pottery vessels, upright jars, low-profile “flat” jars and Cylinder jars such as this one were often commissioned and made on special order from Paqua Naha, Nampeyo and other prominent Hopi potters by prominent Indian traders or trading Post owners such as J.L. Hubbell, Thomas Varker Keam or Thomas Polacca either for themselves or on behalf of or for sale to The Fred Harvey Company and others simply for use as artistic “Trophy” type impressive display pieces for their prominent high-end Southwestern Hotels or trading posts.

"Nampeyo's international fame as a ceramicist unfortunately has overshadowed the brilliance of a number of other early 20th Century Hopi potters and especially true of the equally talented Paqua Naha, Frog Woman."

-Hopi pottery scholar and author, Edwin L. Wade Ph.D.

Now on to the particulars of this mighty jar itself. First, is the sheer physicality, difficulty and serious mechanical logistics of just the making of it; collecting, carrying and processing this extraordinary amount of fine Antelope Mesa clay, coiling and building the jar, scraping and meticulously stone polishing it all over, gathering materials for and grinding all the paints and the actual painting then building a gigantic firing pit and placing the jar in it, the firing process itself, cooling and transporting the finished piece almost certainly by buckboard wagon or mule to the residence or business of its distinguished purchaser, and more on that later. It was clearly a monumental undertaking all the way around, like literally moving a pottery mountain.

We have gotten a distinct sense of the serious logistics of handling this piece just from our extremely limited

modern day experience of moving an transporting the piece by modern day automobile on modern day highways and

just carrying and moving it around our modern day offices for the purposes of photographing it for this

presentation is more than difficult enough.

The jar’s striking painted design is arranged in four large vertical panels, each measuring around 17 1/2" in height and 9" in width, all contained within horizontal framing lines at the top and bottom. These four panels consist of two matched symmetrical pairs of designs in a similar arrangement to the ancient Hopi Sikyatki Period (1375-1625 a.d.) design style of using horizontally-opposed paired designs. The incredible beauty and magnificent quality of the ancient pottery of Sikyatki and other nearby Hopi village ruins such as Awatovi and Kawaiika-A greatly inspired succeeding generations of Hopi potters including Paqua Naha and Nampeyo to create a “Sikyatki-Revival” style of pottery beginning around the last quarter of the 19th Century.

The designs on the first pair of the jar’s painted panels include a large stylized black Sphinx Moth's head with its characteristic rolled up proboscis or tongue along with various stylized feather tips and geometric terraced motifs. The designs on the other pair of panels are stylized eagle tails, bird’s heads and geometric motifs and there are also several very finely stippled and cross-hatched sections. Above the jar’s top framing line around the top of the neck are another two pair of Sikyatki-inspired designs, one of stylized birds in profile, the other of horizontally-oriented split feathers. The painting overall is beautifully and very powerfully done and the overall effect is a most impressive extremely dramatic visual extravaganza, to say the least.

The jar measures a tremendous, almost hard to imagine or believe 24 1/2" in height and it is 14" in diameter at its widest point at the top and it is 9" in diameter across the base. It is in generally excellent condition with some amount of restoration and a small amount of overpainting to one side of the jar’s mid-section to repair a broken area and several cracks. There is also what appears to be a long restored crack on the other side of the jar. The restoration was very well done. For a jar of this remarkable size and century or so of age and considering the extremely primitive conditions under which it was made and transported across the Southwest this is not at all unreasonable and it certainly does nothing to detract from the jar’s visual appeal, in our opinions.

The jar is beautifully signed on the bottom with a large rendition of Paqua Naha's now famous frog signature with its toes distinctively pointing upwards, variations of which her descendents continue using to this day. Interestingly, there is also an old traders code "WERX" written in pencil on the jar's bottom along with a price of $30.00. This was a very substantial amount of money for a piece of Indian pottery at that time. In 1930, thirty dollars would buy 30-40 full meals for two at a restaurant, 50-60 pounds of prime rib or sirloin steak, 200 gallons of milk, 300 gallons of gasoline or a brand new record playing electric gramophone.

Additionally, the provenance of this piece is picture perfect and deeply historic; it comes from the personal family collection of Juan Lorenzo (J.L.) Hubbell (1853-1930), probably the most well-known and respected Indian trader of his or any other time. It’s almost certain that Hubbell himself or his son, Roman, purchased or commissioned this piece directly from Paqua Naha whom he knew well and regularly bought pottery from along with that of her friend and mentor, Nampeyo. There is no way to know this for certain, of course, but this jar was very likely displayed in one of J.L. Hubbell’s eponymous trading posts in Ganado or Winslow, Arizona or in his personal home in Ganado or both. At some point before the Hubbell Trading posts were sold, Hubbell’s descendants removed this jar to keep in their private personal collection. Recently some colleagues of ours obtained a number of items from the old J.L. Hubbell family collection from Hubbell’s descendants, including this jar.

These distinguished hotels such as The Hotel El Tovar and The Bright Angel Lodge at the Grand Canyon, The La Posada Hotel in nearby Winslow, Arizona, The Hotel Alvarado in Albuquerque, New Mexico and others were perfect venues to display such pieces as were various prominent high-end Southwestern trading posts such as those of J.L. Hubbell where this particular jar was almost certainly on proud display. One could just as easily imagine seeing this jar prominently sitting on a lobby table or over a fireplace in any of these fine Fred Harvey Hotel establishments. The generally very good condition of this piece and similar other very large Hopi vessels we have seen is a testament to that distinct display piece possibility in our opinions, there is only a fairly small amount of repaired damage here on this vessel, but no evidence at all of any significant or continued utilitarian use.

To reiterate, we have been buying, selling and collecting fine historic Hopi pottery for over 40 years now and this

is the single largest Hopi pottery piece that we have ever had or ever seen. It is also along with our “Magnificent Seven” pieces shown below one of the most beautiful we have ever had or ever seen. A distinguished “Trophy” art piece and a rare and coveted prize indeed for its next fortunate owner.

SOLD