2020-10-01138 (additional number, BETS inventory tracking) and PO-81 (previous number (donor's original number))
Accession number:
Acc.4816
Description:
Polychrome ceramic bowl, Hopi made by Nampeyo, c. 1905. "Hanging eagle" design. This bowl has a polacca slip and paint dots on the rim.
Donor:
Vincent Drucker and Wendy Drucker
Collection place:
First Mesa, Hopi Reservation, Navajo County
Verbatim coll. place:
Polacca, Hopi
Production place:
First Mesa, Hopi Reservation, Navajo County
Culture or time period:
Hopi
Maker or artist:
Nampeyo
Materials:
Ceramic (material)
Object type:
ethnography
Object class:
Bowls (vessels), Pottery, and Unclassified polychrome pottery
Function:
1.5 Household
Production date:
c. 1905
Accession date:
2020-07-28
Department:
Native US and Canada (except California)
Dimensions:
whole— height 3 inches and whole— diameter 7.625 inches
Comment:
Per Edwin L. Wade,-Bowl painted by Nampeyo with her interpretation of a Sikyatki "hanging eagle" design. This is a design that Nampeyo started to paint in bowls around 1891-1892 and painted on many bowls throughout her career. Bowls with this motif that can be found in most museum collections of her work. (See Martha Struever, Painted Perfection, pages 27-30 for a discussion of Nampeyo painting this motif and Steve Elmore, In Search of Nampeyo page 187 for a photograph of 16 bowls with this motif.) This bowl has a polacca slip and paint dots on the rim—and it has the appearance of an old piece. Nampeyo made some older-looking works until the early 1900s. Thomas Keam, the local trader at Hopi, promoted the sale of prehistoric pottery and so she made work for sale that looked somewhat like these ancient wares. This piece looks quite similar to bowls shown in a 1900 Curtis's photograph of "Drying Pottery." (In The North American Indian-. Volume 12-The Hopi.)