This plate by Preston Duwyenie is made from white Hopi clay found near Third Mesa at Hopi.  The entire plate is stone polished on the front and back.  He has inset a single piece of silver that he has carved in the shape of a bear.  Preston named this piece, “Rain Bear”.   The silver piece is cast from cuttlefish bone.  The textured surface of the silver then has his famous “shifting sand” style of design.   The plate is signed on the back in the clay with Preston’s hallmark which is a woman carrying a child, which comes from Preston’s Hopi name, which means “carried in beauty”.  Preston is from Third Mesa at Hopi and taught ceramics for years at the Institute of American Indian Art (IAIA) in Santa Fe.

“Why the shifting sand designs? Preston says he remembers watching a smooth pebble caught in sand being shifted by the wind, “there was beauty in its isolation within the sea of sand. It was like an island.  The endless sands of time, and the fact that people, too are tossed about by the wind. There is always rippling in our lives”.