This is one of Helen Cordero’s famous “Storytime” sets.  It was in 1964 that Cordero said she made her first storyteller.  According to her, “I made some more of my Storytellers with lots of children climbing on him to listen, then I took them up to the Santo Domingo Feast Day” and the rest is history.  Her pieces were all males, to honor her grandfather, whom she would hear telling children stories of Pueblo life and culture.  The large figure is very complicated in painted design with a checkerboard shirt and squash blossom necklace.  The figure is one of her “Children’s Hour” sets with one large figure surrounded by eight children.  “Helen’s Children’s Hour sets were first made in the early 1970s.  The children are separate pieces ground around a larger figure, rather than attached.  In describing this figure, Helen said, “These are older kids listening to him.  My grandpa used to say “Come Children, it’s time’, and I remember us all around him at the ranch in the summer, and that’s how I thought of the Children’s Hour”.   The children are each in pairs and are listening to him tell a story.  Note the complexity and variety of designs painted on each of the children!  It is an extraordinary set and wonderful varied with the children. The pieces were painted with wild spinach (black) and red clay on white clay.   The large figure is signed on the bottom, “Helen Cordero”.  Some of the children are signed, and some are not, which is not unexpected.  On some of her sets, they were expected to sell as a group, and so she would only sign the largest of the pieces.  All the figures were fired.  They are all in very good condition with no chips, cracks, restoration, or repair.