2024-05 Canteen bank

2024-05 Canteen bank

Canteens, Effigy, Kitsch

This collection contains 5 other pots by Nellie, who has a reputation of being an indifferent potter and painter.  Occasionally one finds a superior example of her work (cf 2010-04) and pot 2024-05, described here, is one of these well-formed and painted examples....
2021-19 Hopi sandal napkin ring

2021-19 Hopi sandal napkin ring

Effigy, Kitsch

This sandal is pure kitsch, and like all great kitsch it makes me smile: especially those little toe prints.  Obviously it is tourist art and I don’t know if it was peddled with a purpose.  I think of it as a napkin ring.   Well-formed and carefully painted, it...
2017-12 Horno ashtray

2017-12 Horno ashtray

Kitsch

This is a simple tourist kitsch by an accomplished potter who could produce pots of high artistic quality.  Like the cowboy ashtray by Nampeyo (also painted by Fannie, 2011-32), I include this pot in the collection to demonstrate the range of production required of...
2011-32 Cowboy Hat Ashtray

2011-32 Cowboy Hat Ashtray

Kitsch

This is the definitive tourist pot. Ashtrays for sale to tourists were a mainstay of the low-end Hopi pottery market from the turn of the century to at least the 1950s, but the cowboy hat motif makes this form the height of kitsch. Katharine Bartlett,...