Hopi-Tewa Deep Bowl with Sikyatki Inspired Design [SOLD]

Birds are significant in Hopi lifeways and rituals and their feathers are used in prayer pahos.  Apparently, this respect for birds has existed since prehistoric Sikyatki times as often illustrated in designs on Sikyatki pottery bowl interiors. Hopi and Hopi-Tewa potters frequently use interpretations of prehistoric designs on contemporary pottery.  Birds are often painted on the interiors of bowls.

This bowl features a stylized bird design on its interior.  The red, outlined in black, extended triangular shape represents the beak, the square is the eye of the bird, and the pair of extensions at the end represent tail feathers.  The red oval, outlined in black, has been explained as representing the earth, leaving the remainder of the bowl, where the bird is displayed, as the area above the earth, or realm of the birds.    

Some of the definitions of designs on prehistoric pottery were provided by late nineteenth century Hopi to Alexander M. Stephen, a self-taught anthropologist who was an associate of Thomas Keam.  Stephen lived among the Hopi for 14 years while collecting pottery for Keam and he questioned Hopi elders for meanings of symbols on the pottery. Keam recorded those interpretations in manuscript form in the 1890s.  His manuscript was not published until 1994. It now exists as Hopi Pottery Symbols (see reference below).

“Hopi Pottery Symbols proposed that for at least one thousand years the Hopi and the early people of northern Arizona called Hisatsinom in Hopi and Anasazi in Navajo have painted a series of symbols on their pottery that constitute a form of language—a means of depicting their world as they saw it.  The symbols stand for natural phenomena—clouds, rain, snow, lightning, thunder, wind, still and running water. They stand for the deities who personified and controlled these natural phenomena—the sky god, the cloud god, the thunder god, the water god, and the germination gods.  Finally, the symbols depict the costumes and paraphernalia used in sacred ceremonies to entreat the gods and the elements they represent to deliver the benefits required for a good life.”  Patterson 1994:1

Condition: this Hopi-Tewa Deep Bowl with Sikyatki Inspired Design is in very good condition

Provenance: from the collection of a family from Colorado

Reference: Patterson, Alex. Hopi Pottery Symbols. Johnson Books, Boulder. 1994