Hopi Polychrome Elaborately Decorated Seed Jar [SOLD]

Steve Lucas is recognized as one of the finest of the younger generation Nampeyo family potters.  He is the grandson of Rachel Namingha Nampeyo and the great-grandson of Annie Healing Nampeyo.  His mother was Eleanor Lucas.  We do not have an exact date of birth, but he was probably born around the mid-1960s.  His Hopi name is Koyemsi, the Hopi-Tewa name for the Mudhead Katsina, the clan to which he belongs.

Lucas has been a consistent award winning artist at Santa Fe Indian Market and Gallup Inter-tribal Indian Ceremonial among others.  He has produced some of the finest pottery available during the last decade.  His awards include First and Second Places at the 1994 Santa Fe Indian Market; First, Second and Third Places at the 1995 Indian Market; Best of Division at the Heard Museum in 1997; Best of Show in the 1998 Santa Fe Indian Market, and the list goes on.

This seed jar is about 10 years old.  It is an exquisite vessel shape with a wide red painted rim below which is a large decorated area consisting mostly of feathers.  The red rim slip and the red in the design area shows flecks of gold dust.  The lower half of the vessel remains without decoration but was highly polished to a perfect burnished finish.  The artist’s name and hallmark are carved into the clay base.

Condition: original condition

Provenance: from the collection of a collector from Colorado

Recommended Reading: Hopi-Tewa Pottery: 500 Artist Biographies, first edition, first printing, by Gregory and Angie Schaaf. One new copy of this book is available at the gallery at $225