Hopi-Tewa Polychrome Seed Jar by Po’Tsa-Weh [SOLD]

Born in Albuquerque to a Hopi-Tewa mother and an Isleta father, Karen Abeita was raised at Hopi, watching her grandmother and aunts make pottery. She left the reservation after high school to work as an optical technician. After living in Phoenix and Lawrence, Kansas, she returned to Hopi in 1984 after her mother passed away. She began to make pottery as a way to provide for her family.

As a child, she observed her grandmother, Mamie Nahoodyce and her aunts Joy Navasie and Sadie Adams make pottery, but she credits her childhood friend Fawn Navasie as the person who taught her how to shape and fire pots. Artistically, she was inspired by the ancient Sikyatki pottery shards she found as she traveled the Hopi Reservation. After being invited to study the collection of Sikyatki pottery at the University of Pennsylvania museum, she became motivated to continue to create pottery in the manner of her spiritual grandmothers. Today, she tries to ensure that the traditional pottery methods and designs of her ancestors live on in her work. Many of the intricate and precisely rendered designs she paints on her pottery are derived from the pottery of her Sikyatki ancestors.

This lovely seed jar incorporates exquisite Sikyatki elements to which the artist has added minute fine-line details. The shoulder is divided into six sections separated by black bands, each having the smallest wavy lines. Directly opposite each design is its mirror image. Stylized bird feather designs are rendered in different combinations of red, black, cream and stippling.

These feather designs are important to the Hopi, feathers representing prayers being sent to the spirit world. On the underbody, there are six diamond shaped feathers.

This is indeed a small gem, a beautifully painted jar, shaped and fired by an expert potter. It is signed on the bottom with a symbol of a parrot, as Karen Abeita is from the Parrot Clan. In addition, her name is signed.

Condition: Excellent Condition

Provenance: this Hopi-Tewa Polychrome Seed Jar by Po'Tsa-Weh is from a Santa Fe Collector

Recommended Reading: Hopi-Tewa Pottery: 500 Artist Biographies by Greg and Angie Schaff