This piece by Preston Duwyenie is made from red Hopi clay found near Third Mesa at Hopi.  The plate is stone polished on both the front and the back.  He has inset 9 pieces of silver cast against cuttle-fish bone.  The appearance of the silver pieces is much like pottery shards found in the sand. The casting creates a similar style of ‘shifting sand’ design as found in his clay work.  The plate is signed on the back with Preston’s hallmark which is a woman carrying a child and his Hopi name, which means “carried in beauty”.   Preston is from Second Mesa at Hopi and taught ceramics for years at the Institute of American Indian Art (IAIA) in Santa Fe.  The plate includes a lucite stand and shipping is also included. 

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”.