Rondina Huma has certainly been one of the most influential Hopi potters working today.  Since her two-time “Best of Show” awards at Santa Fe Indian Market, her tight style and intricately painted pottery has changed the face of contemporary Hopi pottery.   Each piece is coil built, fully stone polished and painted with native clays and bee-weed (black), and native fired.  This bowl is from the early 2000s.  It is fully painted.  The rim is unusual with the reverse feather pattern and the tips of the feathers extending up to the lip.   Below that is a band of fine-line designs.  The rest of the bowl is fully painted.  There are larger polished red and burgundy clay areas that separate the smaller imagery.  The smaller sections are all derived from historic Hopi-Tewa and Sikyatki pottery.  The tight patterns have become more and more intricate and detailed in each passing year.  The interior of the bowl is also fully polished.  On this piece, it is the amount of polished red areas that are amazing.  Each of those small sections was individually stone polished!  The bowl was traditionally fired which created the blushes on the surface.  It is in excellent condition with no chips, cracks, restoration, or repair.  It is signed on the back in the clay, “Rondina Huma”.

Rondina said of this style of her pottery:

“This style is when I first started designing from the bottom to the top. I would get a bunch of sherds and I would put them together and see what pattern they created. Then I would take back the sherds to where I found them. I also polish the inside of all my pottery. People ask how I do it and how I can get so deep inside. I just think it makes a bowl look nicer if it is fully polished. The burgundy-colored [areas] are the water migration. It’s like a spring with the water coming up out of the earth and soaking back into the ground. It’s a full cycle, so the square has to be complete. I do most of the painting freehand. When I look at a pot, I already know what design I’m going to put on there. I can visualize what I’m going to paint, and it is never the same. I don’t really use a pencil—I’m afraid it won’t come off. I try to just measure with my hand to space out the designs.”  Rondina Huma, Spoken Through Clay