Matriarch Helen Cordero Cochiti Pueblo Singing Mother Figurine

Helen Cordero was truly an original artist from Cochiti Pueblo. Unable to fashion pottery vessels in a manner with which she could be satisfied, she changed her course to figurative pottery, rather than give up altogether. Little did she know that she was starting a new tradition in pueblo pottery production?

We tend to think of Helen Cordero making storyteller figurines but she also made other figurines. She made female figurines with Hopi hairstyles, turtles with children on their backs, animals, and nacimientos, female figures with pottery on their heads, and female figures with children.

Her female figurines with children are called Singing Mothers. She did not make female storytellers. All her storyteller figurines are male.

This Singing Mother is of the style from the early 1970s and is exquisite. The two children on her lap are typical of her treatment of children in that one has his hands over his eyes and the other seems to have fallen asleep. In Cordero fashion, the adult female has her eyes closed and her mouth open. She is wearing an exquisite traditional shawl over her shoulders. Her dress has stitches along the side and she wears traditional pueblo moccasins.

Singing Mother figurines are significantly rarer than Storyteller figurines because Cordero made so few of them compared with the larger number of storyteller figurines.

Condition: excellent condition

Provenance: this Matriarch Helen Cordero Cochiti Pueblo Singing Mother Figurine is from the estate of the client to whom we sold this in 2014

Recommended Reading: The Pueblo Storyteller - Development of a Figurative Ceramic Tradition by Barbara Babcock

TAGS: storyteller figurine, pottery, Cochiti Pueblo, Antonita "Toni" Suina, Buffy Cordero, Tim Cordero, Evon Trujillo, Helen Cordero