This is a very detailed lidded jar by Nancy Youngblood.  The box is coil-built and fully carved.  There are two rows of shells carved above and below the double avanyu.  There are 24 shells and each shell has 9 rounded edges carved into the clay.   When Nancy carves the shells, the “ridges” are each rounded, just like they are on her melon bowl!  They are very time involved and create their own, “ribs”.  The 24 shells plus 9 sections create a total of 216 carved ribs on the shells!  The double avanyu are squared out and one is male and one is female.  Each avanyu is also fully polished. The base has carved, rounded melon ribs that are matte.  The lid has a carved shell on each side.  Why shells? Nancy began carving them on her pottery after a trip to the Caribbean in the 1980s.  While it may seem an “exotic” addition to the pottery, shells were frequently traded in pre-contact times and, even today, are worn by the dancers during traditional Pueblo ceremonies.  The jar and lid were fired a glassy black coloration.  It is signed on the bottom, “Nancy Youngblood”.  Simply spectacular!

“The shell, I first started doing that around 1980. I had seen shells when I went to the Caribbean, and I thought that they would look spectacular if I could carve and polish them. For the tan color, instead of using a clay slip on the piece, we wet it with water and then polish the dampened clay. It can be harder to polish and, unless every rib is perfectly smooth with no indentations, it shows every imperfection. You fire it the way you would a red piece. Instead of covering it up with the manure, you pull the wood off and let it cool down slowly. You want to get that deep buckskin color.” Nancy Youngblood, Spoken Through Clay