Hopi-Tewa Jar with a Warm Color Migration Pattern by Fannie Nampeyo [SOLD]

Hopi-Tewa potter Fannie Nampeyo produced this exquisite jar with a warm orange glow and painted a design with impeccable skill of a traditional Sikyatki migration pattern.  The jar is globular in shape with a turned out rim.  Wide framing lines border the upper and lower design panel in a deep brown color.  The fine lines are beautifully displayed in straight parallel order.  The orange blush differs throughout the jar.  It is signed with the name of the potter.  Fannie, after removing pottery from the firing, would wipe on a layer of Vaseline and polish the surface with nylon stockings. This is probably the reason that the dark brown pigment retains its luster.  In many Hopi-Tewa potter’s works, the brown rubs off, but in Fannie’s works.

Fannie Polacca Nampeyo (1900-1987) was a Hopi-Tewa potter who was a daughter of Nampeyo of Hano and Lesou. She had two sisters, Annie Healing Nampeyo and Nellie Nampeyo Douma.  They were all Corn Clan members. Lesou was a Tobacco Clan, but clan inheritance comes from the mother. Fannie had 7 children—Thomas, Elva, Tonita, Iris, Leah, Harold and Ellsworth—all of whom were potters.  Fannie won her first Blue Ribbon in 1961 from the Museum of Northern Arizona at the annual Hopi Show. Her pottery was selected for several museum exhibits in the 1990s. Since she was the youngest daughter of Nampeyo and Lesou, she was better known, personally, by many collectors, most of whom never met Annie or Nellie.  She was still actively making pottery as late as the mid-1980s, and passed away in 1987.

Condition: this Hopi-Tewa Jar with a Warm Color Migration Pattern by Fannie Nampeyo is in very good condition

Provenance: from the collection of Dr. Florence Hawley Ellis of Albuquerque, passed to her daughter and then to her granddaughter, the current owner. Florence Hawley Ellis (1906–1991) worked as both an ethnologist and archaeologist teaching at the University of New Mexico in 1934, teaching courses on archaeology and cultural anthropology until her retirement  in 1971.

Recommended Reading: Fourteen Families in Pueblo Pottery by Rick Dillingham

Relative Links: Hopi Pueblo, Nampeyo of Hano, Annie Healing Nampeyo, Nellie Nampeyo Douma, Thomas, Elva, Tonita, Iris, Leah, Contemporary Pottery, Fannie Nampeyo