This traditional yellowware Hopi stew bowl was made by Nampeyo between 1900 and 1910. It shows her incorporating a traditional Zuni rainbird design into an original composition anchored by a red squared center element. Rainbirds are thus depicted in all four sacred directions. While these elements are traditional, this composition is original to Nampeyo and shows that she was still employing traditional Hopi & Zuni elements after the advents of the Sikyatki Revival of 1896. The revival of yellowware was one of Nampeyo’s enduring contributions to Hopi aesthetics. She did not produce yellowware until after the Sikyatki Revival. This piece is in excellent original condition without repair or restoration. It measures 11” in diameter by 4” high. An excellent example.

Nampeyo was the matriarch of modern Hopi pottery and is credited with single-handedly reviving the pottery tradition at Hopi. She began her career as a traditional tribal potter in the 1870s in Northern Arizona, at the Tewa village on First Mesa at Hopi. Nampeyo evolved over decades into a significant Modernist artist and founder of the Sikyatki Revival art movement, which continues to this day.

Beginning with traditional Walpi designs, then adding the ancient designs found on pottery at pre- colonial Hopi villages such as Sikyatki and Awotovi, Nampeyo mastered the cannon of Hopi aesthetics before creating her own original abstract designs. She adapted her designs over the years, varying them in different ways, and adapting them for different pottery forms.

Recent art history, such as Elizabeth Hutchinson’s The Indian Craze, has re-emphasized the importance of Native American art in the contemporary art world at the beginning of the 20th century, connecting Native American art with the Arts and Crafts movement, art pottery and Modernism. With her commercial successes as an artist and notoriety as a celebrity throughout her lifetime, Nampeyo’s original creations bridged the gap between tribal designs and Modern Art. She was drawing elaborate and confident abstractions from the ancient world well before Picasso and the French painters appropriated from tribal art for their own inspiration. During Nampeyo’s lifetime, her ceramics were revered as supreme examples of modern art, and exhibited along with oil paintings at art fairs, museums, and upscale department stores.