Eagle Tail Design
This huge Hopi-Tewa polychrome jar has a decorated rim and an eagle-tail design modified by the addition of elegant red swags between the curvilinear “feathers.” The pot is accurate both in size and in decoration to an “Old Lady” Nampeyo pot given on March 1, 1907 to...
Eagle Tail Design
This jar is signed “Nampeyo/Fannie” and marked “1942” in pen. Apparently, Nampeyo formed it and her daughter Fannie painted it. Nampeyo probably began potting when she was a teenager in the 1870s; her Sikyatki Revival style dates from the early 1880s. Her eldest...
Eagle Tail Design
The clay body is made of a hard-to-work yellow clay called sikyatska, which, when fired, gives the pot an unusual orange-brown color. The pot has an extremely smooth finish and the black “eagle-feather” design is outlined in white (kaolin) clay. The pot was modeled...
Eagle Tail Design
The splotchy red paint suggests a production date before 1930; I originally estimated 1910 to 1920. The Blairs (1999:92-93) point out that this eagle feather design is characteristic of Nampeyo’s work and is considered as “owned” by her family (as in Nampeyo’s seedpot...
Eagle Tail Design
Pot 2005-16, ca 1900-1905 Of all the Nampeyo pots in this collection, jar 2005-16 best represents the fully-developed Sikyatki Revival aesthetic that marks Nampeyo as “genius” and made her famous. There are a number of great Nampeyo pots in this collection,...
Eagle Tail Design
On 7/8/05, I stopped by Vernida’s home outside of Polacca to ask her if she had an unfired pot that I might purchase to help illustrate the process of creating Hopi pots. She did not have any completed unfired pots, but she did have two undecorated and unfired pots...
