Hopi Large Seed Jar with Sikyatki Style Birds [SOLD]

Rarely is Hopi-Tewa pottery as thin-walled as Acoma pottery but, in this instance, Rainy Naha has achieved that.  Thin-walled is one attribute and finely constructed is another.  The jar is well balanced and beautifully slipped in creamy white clay that has been stone polished to a beautiful burnish. 

The pair of Sikyatki-inspired eagles or parrots was applied with the utmost precision.  Take note of the cleanness of the curved lines of the body and recall that those were made with the fibers of the leaf of a yucca plant.  They are not only thin curved lines but the two are spaced symmetrically apart throughout the body of the birds.  It would be difficult to do that with architectural drafting tools but amazing to do it free hand.  The designs on the bodies of the birds are reproductions of designs, some from potsherds and perhaps some from pictographs.  

The quadrants between the panels containing the birds each contain 20 postage-stamp-size sections that are filled with precise design elements using different pigments and with different designs.

Rainy Naha is a daughter of Helen Naha (the first Featherwoman) and the granddaughter of Paqua Naha (the first Frogwoman).  Her siblings are Burel, Sylvia, and Rechenda. She signs her pottery with the traditional feather hallmark used by her mom and then adds her first name.  Rainy generally makes smaller pottery items but this one is a major masterpiece and the largest of her pottery of which I am familiar.

Condition: new

Recommended Reading: Fourteen Families in Pueblo Pottery by Rick Dillingham

Provenance: from the artist