Hopi Small Seed Jar with Punched Rim Design [SOLD]

It is believed that as Nampeyo began losing her eyesight, she began to make more tactile decorations on her pottery.  According to Kramer, “A photograph taken by Emry Kopta around 1920 is the earliest to show a jar with a corrugated neck; several other corrugated jars can be attributed to this period.”  It was about that time that Nampeyo began losing her sight.  She had been treated about 20 years earlier for Trachoma but it began to reoccur in the 1920s and eventually clouded her vision.

Another quotation from Kramer states: “Three decades after visiting the potter during the summer of 1920, Neil M. Judd wrote that ‘Nampeyo was already nearly blind.’  Nearly five decades after studying pueblo potters in 1924 and 1925, an elderly Ruth Bunzel stated that Nampeyo had been totally blind at that time.”  So, it is generally accepted that Nampeyo’s sight began to fail around 1920 and was completely gone by 1925.  She, from experience, was very capable of forming pottery but beginning to lose the ability to paint designs.  It was during this time that her daughters Annie and Fannie painted their mom’s pottery. 

This jar certainly was formed by Nampeyo and the corrugation applied by her but the design was probably painted by Annie.  Nampeyo continued painting her pottery as her sight dimmed but eventually it was necessary for her to solicit help from her daughters.  The lines and layout of the painted design are too fine for Nampeyo to have painted it with failing sight.  It most likely dates to the mid- to late-1920s or perhaps into the early-1930s. 

Interestingly, Carl Oscar Borg visited Hopi in 1920 and, inspired by Nampeyo, wrote a poem in which he stated “I see thy busy fingers mould the desert clay . . . Thy eyes so dim . . .” Kramer 1996.  This is a credible statement of her loss of vision at that time.

Condition:  The jar is in very good condition with some abrasion to the painted design and a very insignificant nick in the clay at the rim.

Referenced Material: Nampeyo and Her Pottery by Barbara Kramer 

Provenance: from a gentleman from Colorado