Hopi-Tewa Very Large Polychrome Storage Jar [SOLD]

Daisy Hooee Nampeyo (1906 - pre-1998) Tobacco Flower was the daughter of Annie Healing and granddaughter of Nampeyo of Hano. Her biography is extraordinarily interesting. She was exposed to world travel in her youth, but chose to return to the reservation where she spent her life making pottery and teaching others to make pottery.

“Threatened with blindness when she was twelve years old, she left the Hopi reservation in northern Arizona to have corrective surgery performed in California.  Her friendship with a wealthy patron of the arts led to studies abroad in painting and sculpture.” Fowler 1977

She met and married Leo Poblano, a Zuni silversmith, and settled at Zuni where she carved fetishes with her husband.  Leo was killed while working as a firefighter during a forest fire in California. Daisy then went back to making pottery.  She later married Sidney Hooee and spent the remainder of her life at Zuni Pueblo. There is much more to the life of this wonderful potter and her story is told in a book by Carol Fowler.

This bowl, like all of her work, is completely Hopi-Tewa in style. Even at Zuni she never abandoned the Hopi style of pottery. This bowl is decorated with the Sikyatki-revival migration pattern.  It is a very large jar and a significant work by Daisy.

The jar is of the shape of a storage jar rather than the shape of the flat-top seed jars made famous by Nampeyo.  It is filled with the *migration pattern for the upper half of the body and orange blush on the lower half. The jar is Hopi in style except for Daisy’s tribute to her Zuni life.  She painted the base of the jar, which is not visible unless turned over, a dark brown as seen on all Zuni traditional pottery. She signed the jar on the side at the base.

Condition: there are no major condition problems but there is a light fire cloud on one side and a very minor amount of slip loss in the beige color.  It appears that a slip crack occurred on the base of the jar which Daisy then smeared with a new application of clay. It is not significant nor threatening.

Provenance: this Hopi-Tewa Very Large Polychrome Storage Jar is from a gentleman from New Mexico

Recommended Reading: Daisy Hooee Nampeyo—The story of an American Indian by Carol Fowler.  (A copy of the book will be provided with the purchase of the jar)

*Migration Pattern: represents the migration of the Hopi through four worlds.  The parallel lines presumably represent the migration of the Hopi.