Two round faces represent Tawa, the Hopi sun god; these are interspersed with designs of the Hopi rain cloud. A band of linear and stepped designs encircles the top of the pot, which is white-slipped in the Zuni style and is made of clay from Zuni. Daisy also signed “Zuni, N.M.” on the pot.

Daisy was born in Hano around 1905 and after an extraordinary life, which included sickness, world travel, and marriage to a Hopi man and divorce, she married a Zuni man in 1929 and moved to a Zuni pueblo. In the late 1950s, her husband was killed while fighting a forest fire. Several years later, in the early 1960s, she married another Zuni man, Sidney Hooee. Also in the 1960s, she began to teach pottery making in the Zuni style at the Zuni High School (see 2003-06). She died in 1994.

Although small and modest in design, this pot captures much of the history of Daisy’s complicated life. There are eight other Daisy pots in the collection. One, like jar 2007-02, was formed at Zuni of local kaolin clay (2020-05).   One amusing jar is an ordinary Hopi bowl with two Zuni frogs perched on its shoulder (2011-13). The other six are made of Hopi clay with Hopi designs: a pair of early pots are signed with her tobacco leaf mark (see 2007-07 and 2007-08); one early pot is signed simply “Daisy” (see 2000-10); The grandest Daisy pot in the collection may have been formed by Daisy or her mother, but was magnificently painted by Daisy (2019-16). Two made after her third marriage and signed “Daisy Hooee Nampeyo” (1994-08 and 2015-07). Thus the mix of Zuni clay and white slip with Hopi design makes 2007-02 unusual and is an amalgam, like Daisy’s life.

Daisy frequently also made pottery with a relatives, see 1989-06 (Rachael), 1994-03 (Cheryl) and 2010-25 (Shirley).

For a ca. 1975 photograph of Daisy with some of her Zuni-style pottery, see the Blairs (1999:198).

Purchase History:
Purchased on 2/24/07 on eBay on from Robert Paulson of Aurora, CO. He had no provenance on the pot.