Mark Tahbo often places his designs within framing lines, but chose not to with this jar because the original image worked so well as a free-floating design inside Nampeyo's bowl.  The most notable difference between Nampeyo's and Tahbo's versions is that Nampeyo's design featured feather designs, which Tahbo chose to replace with his own elaborate diamond hatchwork.

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Tufa casting, often erroneously referred to as sand casting, is one of the earliest techniques used by the Navajo smiths. Today, it is still accomplished in the same manner as it was 150 years ago. This buckle was cast in silver, and then painstakingly polished and refined to a smooth finish.

Before a cast buckle such as this one can be made by an artisan, he or she must first fashion a mold from a whitish sandstone rock, hard enough to withstand the hot metal without splitting and yet soft enough to be grooved into the wanted design. Today, these can be purchased at local jewelry supply stores, but in earlier days, the artisan searched the Reservation for suitable rock and carved the desired design himself. When one of these molds broke, perhaps from not having been warm enough to receive the molten silver, it was a minor tragedy. Today, it is a slight inconvenience. Now, a new one can be purchased on the next trip into town.

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Santa Feans know that the annual rainfalls will start in early July and continue through August.  That is referred to as the monsoon season even though the rainstorms last only about 30 minutes in late afternoon, followed by the return of the sun.  The downpour can be significant in that half hour.  Rain falls in isolated regions rather than all over the area.

In this Oil on Canvas Painting of Mountain Landscape, Tony Abeyta has placed the rain storm in the mountains and foothills.  The clouds are various shades of blue and cast a darkness over the area.  The mountains are green from previous summer storms.  In the foreground, the chamissa is blooming in a beautiful yellow hue, the ground is yellow and brown, and the small bushes in the background are dark red.

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The silver band was formed in the tufa-casting manner by which molten silver was poured into a tufa mold that had been carved in the desired shape and pattern.  Once removed from the mold, the band was then heated and curved to its present shape.  The four silver rays around the stone appear to be hand hammered and soldered onto the band.  A large tear drop turquoise cab was then set in a scalloped silver bezel and attached to the bracelet.  There is no artist stamp or signature on this Sterling Silver Tufa Cast Bracelet with a Turquoise Cab.

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It is no surprise that Mark Tahbo's work appeals to collectors of contemporary pottery.  He is an excellent potter whose creations, while varied in form and design, always display a mastery of his craft.  What is interesting is that his pottery has begun to attract the attention of collectors who focus primarily on historic pottery.  This is most likely because he so gracefully blends his own ideas with the classic Hopi Pueblo designs that inspired him to begin potting in the first place.

This jar is an excellent example of Mark Tahbo doing just that-seamlessly blending his own designs with those made famous by Hopi matriarch Nampeyo of Hano.  He explained to us that the ovular designs, which include "curled feathers," were inspired by Nampeyo's corn designs.  Here, they have been turned upright.  Instead of using the crisscrossing migration pattern lines, he used a simpler set of horizontal lines which are crossed diagonally-his own interpretation of a master potter's designs.

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Here is a video of Mark talking about this pot.

Some of Shirpoyo's exhibits were with the Santa Fe Indian Market, Colorado Indian Market, Glenwood Springs Fall Arts Festival, Colorado, and New Mexico State University. He was featured in articles in the Denver Post, Albuquerque Journal, and Dallas News, along with various travel section magazines throughout the United States.

Many of Shirpoyo's paintings are owned by patrons throughout the United States as well as Canada, England, France, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, and South America, to name a few.  It was with much pleasure that we accepted this large watercolor brought to us by a resident of Santa Fe.

Shirpoyo basically painted scenes in and around his village of Isleta Pueblo.  This watercolor features a couple of adobe houses on a hilltop at the pueblo.  There are ladders leaning against the buildings, horno ovens outside in the yard, and a female in colorful clothing heading toward one of the houses.  The foreground is awash in beautiful fall colors as the native grasses began their annual sleep. 

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Identity of early 20th-century Native artists is not always documented in the standard reference books but sometime can be uncovered in more unusual places.  There is no mention of Tomacito Vigil (c.1923-) Po-qui-Tsireh in any of the published books on Native artists that we have consulted, however, his name appears in a PhD Dissertation to the University of Texas, Austin, in 2011.  It is simply a line entry with his name and that he attended the Santa Fe Indian School in 1936-37.

The Original Painting Entitled Swallow Dancer is marked on verso: "Swallow Dancer" by Tomacito Vigil, age 13, San Ildefonso Pueblo.  It is signed in center right on the front Po-qui-Tsireh, his Tewa name.  It is a single figure dancer with no background design, in typical fashion of The Studio of the Santa Fe Indian School.  The dancer has a large green ruff around his neck, black body paint, white kilt with a fox tail, black stockings, and white moccasins.

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Tesuque and San Ildefonso Pueblo are somewhat neighbors.  The people speak the same language and their historic pottery is similar in shape and design.  It is sometimes difficult to make the determination which pueblo was responsible for a specific jar.  Batkin (see reference), stated that collections made at Tesuque in the 1870 to 1880 period showed that the designs were of recent evolution.  Is it likely that Tesuque potters styled their designs on those seen at San Ildefonso?  Of course, we will never know for sure but it is quite possible that was the sequence.

San Ildefonso switched from its traditional cream slip, that required stone polishing, to the bentonite slip used by Cochiti Pueblo potters, around 1905.  Tesuque switched also, but probably did not start to do so until a decade later and some potters did not change until the 1940s.  Potters at San Ildefonso began changing the color of the rim from red to black as early as 1897.  Tesuque potters switched rim color from red to black in the 1880s. 

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A few of Tonita Vigil Peña (1893-1949) Quah Ah's works, painted in 1922 and 1923, were signed:

          Tonita P. Arquero

as on this Male and Female Pair of Cochiti Pueblo Squash Dancers, in honor of her husband, Epitacio Arquero. This signature is quite rare.

Tonita Peña labeled each of these paintings on verso Cochiti Pueblo Squash Dance $5.00.  Whether the Squash Dance is still being performed a hundred years after these paintings were completed is not publicly known.

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It was ingenious of some unknown Native artist to create a squash blossom necklace using repurposed materials-United States dimes and half dollars.  I do not know who was the first to do so or exactly when the first one was made, but it was probably in the late 1970s.  Supposedly it is illegal to deface United States coins but that did not stop the creation of this and other similar necklaces.

Each bead in the Navajo Squash Blossom Necklace with U S Coins was made by forming two United States dime coins into hemispheres and then soldering them together, drilling them in their center, and stringing them for a necklace.

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This early 1900s Acoma olla was decorated in its entirety in Zuni designs. For over a hundred years, Acoma potters have borrowed and reproduced Zuni designs. This trend seemed to be favorable in the 1890 to 1915 time period. Designs moved rather freely between Zuni and Acoma, no doubt due to their geographical proximity and probable historic connections. 

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 "Dolores Estevan Ascencion was married to Juan Estevan Ascencion; they had one daughter, Lita. A woman named Juana Dolores Estevan, who may have been the same person, was enumerated in the 1910 Federal census and identified as a pottery maker; she was the mother of Juana Maria Yousiewa, wife of Juan Estevan Yousiewa.

"The authors know of four examples of pottery identified as the work of Dolores Ascencion. One, a black-on-red jar was purchased by Kenneth M. Chapman at Acoma in 1928; his record indicates it was made by Dolores Ascension. This jar is in the SAR collection (IAF.1031). The same jar however, was identified as the work of Santana Sanchez by Marie Z. Chino in 1963. It is a copy of a Hawikuh glaze-on-red dating from about 1670 in the SAR collection (IAF.996), which Dr. Harry P. Mera purchased from Dolores Ascencion, also in 1928). Chapman may have commissioned the copy. A closely similar jar by Ascencion is in the MIAC collection (7757/12); it also has matte white pigment in the decoration.

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 Acoma potters generally present a design in one of two different manners.  One is to use the entire vessel as a single canvas with no distinction between the rim, shoulder and body of the vessel, that is, the design expands over the shoulder and to the rim without divination.  The other manner is to draw a framing line at the shoulder and then treat the neck design and body design as separate entities.

This jar has a design covering the entire surface with no division at the shoulder.  There are basically two design styles to this jar.  All of the elements in brown constitute the design in geometric terms-triangles, scrolls, rectangles, circles and lines.  The other design features birds presented in orange slip, outlined in brown.  Most often, Acoma birds used on pottery are parrots, but this potter chose a beaked bird with a fancy top knot on its head and wings that are separated completely from the body.  If one searched thoroughly it might be possible to find documented examples of a bird of this style but I have not before seen one with the wings completely separated from the body. 

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The foundation of this bracelet is made from a pair of triangular-shaped silver bars, spaced apart, connected at the ends, and stamped with traditional images.  At the top center of the bracelet are five oval shaped natural turquoise cabs, varying from blue to slightly green in color.  Each cab is set in a handmade silver bezel.  The five settings are separated by pairs of silver dots.

The bracelet is inscribed with the name J. Chee, but I have not located an artisan with that name, presented in that arrangement, in any of the published references.

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This is a most unusual and most spectacular canteen, built, I believe, for actual use by its owner while working in the fields.  It is very difficult to date this piece of pottery because I have never seen a documented one of the same vessel shape. Seen from profile, this one has an egg-like shape. I would estimate it to be from the early 20th century.

The traditional Acoma features are all present: coarse, white paste of a distinctly chunky texture, pottery shards for temper, orange-red underbody paint and rag-wiped white slip.  The decoration is a full version of a bird. Notice the head on the upper right, the legs at lower right, and tail feathers at lower left, all executed in black-on-white. The body is the medallion-like element at the apex of the canteen.

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Made circa 1920, this vessel exhibits the classic traits of late Santo Domingo Polychrome. The neck interior is red-slipped, with a black rim top. The under body is stone-polished bare paste with a one-inch rag-wiped red band. The cream/off-white is rag-wiped bentonite slip with black vegetal designs, all of which are broken with one vertically oriented ceremonial break.

Most storage jars were made in the 19th Century. Rarely were ones this large made in the 20th Century. Four birds in polychrome design rest on the lower framing lines, and four floral elements complete the design. Below the single framing line at the rim are cloud elements.

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This original painting by Tonita Peña (Quah Ah) of San Ildefonso Pueblo was probably painted in the first two years of the 1920s. Over her career, Tonita used a variety of signatures on her paintings. (A complete description of the signatures and corresponding dates used may be seen in the biographical information provided by clicking here or on her name above.)

In this painting, Peña presents a beautiful image of a Deer Dancer in active dance position with his right leg raised in a movement of dance.  His deer antler head dress is elaborate with feathers in motion on the antlers.  A beautiful green ruff hangs from his neck, eagle feathers bundled together hang from the white rain sash on his back.  He wears a beautifully embroidered kilt, white shirt, leggings with yarn ties just below the knees and white moccasin with skunk tied to the backs.  In his hands, he carries two sticks that take the place of the deer's front legs.

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The hesitation in defining the origin of this bowl in the above title is because it is one that could have originated at Cochiti or Kewa Pueblo, therefore we designated it as Keres-the language of both pueblos. The outturned rim is more a feature of Cochiti Pueblo but the strong black on the exterior is more like that from Kewa Pueblo.  The single rain cloud on the interior is something that is generally not seen on any Kewa pottery, another fact leaning toward an origin of Cochiti.

The Keres Pueblo Large Pottery Serving Bowl is most interesting with the outturned rim, something that sets it above most serving bowls from the Keres Pueblos.  The single rain cloud design on the interior is also a unique design not generally seen on such bowls.  The potter of this bowl was creative, artistic, and expressive.

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There are several Navajo jewelers with the last name Billie documented in the literature but not one with the first name of Stewart.  Most likely, he is a relatively newcomer in the craft.

The bracelet was beautifully crafted in wide, heavy stock sterling silver.  A sky blue turquoise stone is set in the top center and flanked by two long oval designs that were executed in repoussé.  The edges of the silver were stamped in wave-like form.  The bracelet is beautiful and well crafted.

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This Navajo bracelet appears to be of the style often made in the 1970s where the jewels were set in a shadow box arrangement.  Additionally, the coral appears to be comprised of a mixture of powdered coral and a binding agent.  The result is a coral-color setting with a matte finish. 

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