It was documented around 1900 that basket making was practiced in nearly every Pima home.  Twenty years later it was stated that not one out of ten women could weave a creditable basket.  In that 20 years, commercial utilitarian vessels became available so it is not unexpected that they would replace hand-woven baskets for home use.  Since collectors and tourists were only willing to pay one to two dollars for a basket, the women realized that it was not worth their time to make them any longer.  They could earn that per hour doing field work.

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Navajo blankets were of a size to comfortably wear.  Generally, they were of banded patterns in a horizontal stripe and with no border.  When the traders began asking the women to weave rugs, the weavers chose familiar banded patterns, enlarged the size, and made the yarn looser and thicker.  This lasted for 20 years or so before a more definite rug pattern developed.  This 20-year period has been recognized as a period of transition from blanket to rug and has been designated the Transitional Period of Navajo weaving, and the textiles from this period are known as Transitional Rugs.

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This elongated turquoise stone has been anchored in a silver bezel surrounded by a sheet of silver drops.  The pendant is attached to a necklace of silver beads. 

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The Zuni Rainbow Man is among the most popular jewelry item for collectors. Representations of specific native religious imagery such as this was frowned upon among most pueblos, but some ceremonially significant figures were conventionalized and used for decorative purposes, probably knowingly so, because of non-Indian interest. Some of these figures had their appearances deliberately altered to avoid offending traditionalists' spiritual sensitivities.

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Harrison Begay (1914-2012) Haashké yah Níyá - The Wandering Boy often painted images that he intended to be retained as a pair.  This is one in which he painted a young Navajo boy on his horse and a matching painting of a young Navajo girl on her horse.  The pair looks so well together that it would not be proper to separate them so we are offering them only as a pair.

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Howard Sice is the son of a Hopi mother and Laguna father. He served in the US Air Force for 20 years and came back and began a career in silversmithing. He is known for his etching technique, creating delicate designs on a silver surface.  He has won numerous awards and has exhibited at Santa Fe's Indian Market, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture and the Arizona State Museum.

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The craftsmanship of Albert Nells is easy to recognize. His distinctive geometric overlay is usually punctuated with small dots of silver. He uses the traditional Diné colors of blue, red, black and white in his channel inlay. Nells has been making jewelry since the late 1970s and has been the recipient of awards ever since.

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The bear paw is an iconic symbol in Native American art. It has been associated with strength, protection and healing.

This well-made buckle is done in the Hopi overlay style. It is fabricated on a heavy gauge of silver with a cut-out image of a bear paw. We have been unable to find any information about the artist, Jere Moody.

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San Ildefonso Pueblo members dance the Comanche Dance every year on January 23rd, which is the pueblo's feast day.  The peaceful Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona never wore feathered headdresses popular with tribes believing in the virtue of warfare.  The Navajo, Apache, Ute and Comanche were the ones who raided the pueblos.

San Ildefonso Pueblo celebrates the Comanche Dance to honor the end of hostilities between the tribes and their peaceful co-existence.  The dancers have painted faces, wear a feathered head bonnet, and some carry a flag that has meaning in Plains Indian custom; a warrior proved his valor by planting his flag in the ground during battle, tied himself to it, and defended it to the death against all-comers.  He earned a feather bonnet after accomplishing this feat.

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The foundation of this bracelet consists of three flat strips of silver connected at each end. Two round flat silver discs each support nine small turquoise stones, some green and some blue.  The center stone of each disc is surrounded by silver wire.

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Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo had a strong tradition of plainware pottery production prior to 1900.  Pottery styles included Black-over-gray and Red-over-tan, the difference being only from the firing technique.  Pottery was slipped only partially, usually the upper half, in red clay.  If fired in an oxidizing atmosphere, the result was Red-over tan, the tan being the natural color of the clay body.  If fired in a reduction firing, the result was Black-over-gray, the gray resulting from the firing effect on the natural tan clay body.

Those two styles of pottery were the extent of pottery production at the pueblo.  The lack of painted designs was the reason such vessels were so beautiful.  Vessel shape and high burnish were the traits that brought out the beauty of each jar or bowl.

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When the current owner purchased this item decades ago, she was told that it was hand-tanned hide from a Hopi tribal member and that it dated to circa 1920s.  There is no written documentation to back this up but there is no reason to doubt it either.

The rain cloud symbols are certainly a pueblo design and are seen on some of the Hopi Katsina masks.  The lower edges of the hide show some fragility which would help substantiate the age.  The hide has been mounted on a fabric backing and then framed in a 3-1/8"-deep Plexiglas box. The paint colors are still very vivid and well preserved.

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Butterflies are captivating in nature and just as beautiful on Hopi wicker basketry. This plaque exhibits a very tight weave and multiple colors.

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The Left Handed Katsina is so called because he carries his bow in his right hand rather than in his left. In fact, he generally does everything backwards. The reason for this is not clear. The Hopi say he came to them from the Chemehuevi Indians. He appears quite frequently in a great many dances, like the Mixed Kachina, in groups in the kivas or separately as a warrior in the Powamu Ceremony. He may act as a prompter in a dance or be found making odd little bows and taking small mincing steps at the edge of a procession.  A great deal of the time he has trouble with Hó-e when they appear in the same dance. - Wright 1973

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#adobegallery #HopiPueblo #Katsina #Kachina # #Doll #SouthwestIndianArt #PuebloArt #SantaFeNM

San Ildefonso Pueblo Artist Richard Martinez (1904-1987) Opa Mu Nu wrote the title of this painting on the back so it is not a title made up by us but one selected by the artist, so perhaps there is a Pueblo legend that supports this painting.  Montezuma is asking the game animals to make themselves available as food for the Pueblo peoples.  In the background are mountains, over which are a rainbow and partial sun.  It is signed in lower center.

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This chile bowl bears the name of Torivio Calabaza on the underside that was painted and fired in so it would be the name of the maker of the bowl.  A paper label on the base states a date of c1950s.  The bowl appears to have been made to sell and not for use at the pueblo. It has a modernist design of bars of black triangles and rectangles in mirror image offset to one side of the oval cream background.  The rim is black and has a ceremonial line break that penetrates the design panel completely.  The interior is polished red slip. 

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Jonathan Batkin once pointed out what should have been obvious had one taken the time to think about history.  There was no need for large dough bowls or for the outdoor ovens called horno prior to the arrival of the Spaniards.  The reason being that the Spaniards brought flour to the pueblos from which they made oven bread-thus the need for the bowl and for the oven.

Even though the Spaniards came in the late 1500s, it was close to the mid-1700s before the pueblo people accepted the white flour from the Spaniards.  Maybe it took 150 years for the pueblos to accept the change, but gradually they did.  Dough bowls seemed to appear at Zia Pueblo in the late 1700s.

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This pristine Zia Pueblo New Chile Bowl chile bowl is relatively new and has not been used for serving food.  It is in excellent original condition. If one looks at the white as the design, then it appears to be tulip-shaped.  If one looks at the brown as the painted design, then it appears to be a cloud.

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Zuni Pueblo potters, except for a few, have never been appreciated for outstanding application of design, unlike their closest neighbors, the Acoma potters.  Zuni clay is more porous than that at Acoma and more difficult to obtain a smooth egg-shell hard surface on which to paint designs.  The slip used does not appear to respond to a hard burnish, leaving a poorer surface on which to paint. 

It is recognized that, by 1920, there were only a dozen good potters at Zuni making excellent pottery.  Most other potters had been convinced by the new trader, C. G. Wallace, who opened a trading post at the pueblo in 1918, to make small beaded items.  He was reluctant to ship pottery so this was his solution.  He was purchasing over 600 beaded items daily at one point.  Pottery production suffered seriously because of Wallace's actions.

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Tse-Pé Gonzales (1940- 2000) was generally known by his singular name. His mother was Rose Gonzales, the potter who introduced carved blackware pottery to San Ildefonso Pueblo. Tse-Pé followed the tradition of carved pottery, but chose sgraffito carving rather than the deep carving of his mother's style. In the early 1970s, Tse-Pé was among the first potters to participate in the sgraffito movement, along with Tony Da, Popovi Da, Joseph Lonewolf, Art Cody and other male potters. Perhaps because pottery was traditionally a woman's craft, the sgraffito technique was adopted by males as a way not to produce woman's work.

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