Intricately Designed Hopi Pueblo Pottery Seed Jar by Les Namingha [SOLD]

This Hopi Pueblo seed jar by Tewa-Zuni artist Les Namingha is an excellent example of the artist’s ability to create wonderfully unique pottery.  The shape of the piece resembles a classic Hopi seed jar, but its rim flares upward. It resembles the mouth of a volcano, with one side that dips down a bit further than the others.  It’s a smooth, graceful, and most significantly, unique shape. The vessel’s color is an earthy orange.

Namingha’s design work is excellent and again, most unusual.  Save for the jar’s flat bottom, the underbody is covered in brown pigment.  This brown pigment is covered with hundreds of cream-colored dots. The brown pigment’s upper border twists and turns, creating a variety of shapes.  From their edges and corners, lines emerge, forming intricate designs within the orange upper half of the jar. Maroon lines with brown dots emerge from the brown lines, ultimately taking over the top half of the jar and forming a spider web of sorts.  This beautiful Les Namingha jar was made in 2002.

Tewa-Zuni artist Les Namingha (1968- ) is an exceptional potter and painter. His forms are well-shaped, his painting is fine, his designs innovative. His final polish is smooth.  Namingha is classed as a Tewa-Zuni potter. He is the grandson of Rachel Namingha Nampeyo, son of Emerson Namingha (Tewa) and a Zuni mother; nephew of Dextra Quotskuyva Nampeyo; cousin of Dan Namingha and Hisi Nampeyo. He is heavily related to the Nampeyo family of Hopi Pueblo but his mother was Zuni and he follows in her clan.

Condition: this Intricately Designed Hopi Pueblo Pottery Seed Jar by Les Namingha is in excellent condition

Provenance: private New Mexico collection, originally purchased from Robert Nichols Gallery in 2002

Recommended Reading and Reference: Hopi-Tewa Pottery: 500 Artist Biographies by Gregory Schaaf.