“Coyote and the Winter Shawl” Storyteller with 4 Children [SOLD]

Snowflake Flower was named Estephanita after her grandmother Estephanita Herrera, but she is known as Stephanie or Snowflake Flower.  She is a sister to Ada Suina.  She attended the University of New Mexico and received her BS in Education in 1985.  She had started making pottery figurines around 1979 and has specialized in storytellers, nacimientos, owls and other figurines.

She places prayer feathers (see over left eye) on her figurines, something she started doing in 1983 when her daughter went in to a coma. She continued to put feathers on the figures as a prayer for her recovery and that that prayer would be spread through more and more people as they purchased her pottery.  Finally, 16 years later, her daughter awoke from the coma.

This figurine is of a coyote holding human children.  It is perhaps a Cochiti Pueblo legend but I am not familiar with it at this time. The figurine is signed with the title, artist, and dated 1989 on the underside.  There are 4 children.

Condition: The coyote's tongue was cracked down in the mouth and that has been professionally corrected and repaired.

Recommended Reading :  The Pueblo Storyteller by Barbara A. Babcock. 

Provenance: from a family collection from Wichita, Kansas