Cochiti Pueblo Pottery Drummer Figurine [SOLD]

Helen Cordero is certainly accepted as the most innovative potter at Cochiti Pueblo.  From a complete failure at making traditional pottery vessels she blossomed at making figurative pottery, particularly storyteller figurines.  It was not always so, however.  She started making pottery of standard shapes and just could not succeed at arriving at the quality she desired.  After accepting that she failed at that task, she was encouraged to make small animal figurines, which she did.  From animals, she progressed to human figures—the first being a female holding a child, which has been called a Singing Mother. 

When Alexander Girard, the well-known architect and folk art collector, met Cordero at a Santo Domingo Pueblo feast day, she was selling her figurines.  He bought one of the Singing Mothers and encouraged Helen to make more with more children on them and to bring them to him in Santa Fe and he would purchase them.  As she continued making these, she had a thought about making them in the likeness of her grandfather who had been a storyteller at the pueblo.  That was the beginning of the famous Cochiti Storyteller Figurines.

Helen was married to Fred Cordero, a famous Cochiti drum maker.  It was this inspiration that guided Helen to make a drummer figurine, such as this one.  He sits with his legs crossed and with a drum resting on his left leg while his right arm is up in the air ready to come down on the drum.  As she did with all her storytellers, she made this drummer with his mouth open and eyes closed.

Condition: original condition

Provenance: from the personal collection of Nancy Shroyer Howard, author of the children's book Helen Cordero and the Storytellers of Cochiti Pueblo, Davis Publications, Worcester. 1995.  This drummer figurine is published in the book!

Recommended Reading: The Pueblo Storyteller: Development of a Figurative Ceramic Tradition by Barbara Babcock, et al