Hopi Pueblo Polychrome Jar by Paqua Naha (Frog Woman) [SOLD]

This Hopi Pueblo Polychrome Jar by Frog Woman is a beautiful vessel shape with an expanding body that rolls inward to a tall vertical neck.  There are wide framing lines above and below the design panel, a brown rim, and a highly complex design executed in brown and red on the cream slip.  It is an exceptional jar by Paqua Naha. The restricted use of red pigment is an indication of an early work by Paqua. Later, she expanded the use of red pigment.

The jar is signed with the frog hallmark of the first Frog Woman, Paqua Naha (c.1890-1955), distinguished from the hallmark of her daughter, Joy Navasie.  Paqua's hallmark frog has distinct and individual lines for toes.  Joy's hallmark frog has webbed feet.

Paqua Naha's early pottery was a yellow clay, which Nampeyo had popularized as Sikyátki revival ware. She became well known as a potter by the 1920s and started using a frog hallmark to sign her works around 1925. Late in her career, she experimented with white slip and innovated a whiteware technique which her daughter Joy Navasi continued producing. 

She participated in the "Museum of Northern Arizona's 2nd Hopi Craftsman Exhibit" in 1931.Her works are included in the collections of the National Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of Northern Arizona, and the Heard Museum.

Condition: very good condition

Provenance: this Hopi Pueblo Polychrome Jar by Paqua Naha (Frog Woman) is from a client of Adobe Gallery from Colorado

Recommended Reading:  Fourteen Families in Pueblo Pottery by Rick Dillingham

TAGS: Southwest Indian Pottery, Contemporary Pottery, Hopi Pueblo, Joy Navasie, Paqua Naha, Original Frog Woman