Stunning!  This is an exceptional new jar by Steve Lucas.  He remains one of the leading Hopi-Tewa potters working today.  Each piece is coil built, stone polished, painted with native clay slips and bee-weed (black) and traditionally fired.  Steve has won “Best of Show” at Santa Fe Indian Market and his work remains some of the most refined and creative.  This large jar is elegant in form and design. The shape is inspired by the Sikyatki pottery from Hopi, with the wide shoulder.  Steve has given the jar a sloping shoulder so that the design will show better.  The top half is fully painted with interlocking Red Tail Hawk wings.  Each of the wings is painted with bee weed and then highlighted with polished brown and red clay slips.  The brown polished areas give the jar a striking depth of color.  Steve has long been an innovator in Hopi-Tewa pottery, with the addition of the highly polished red clay slip with the mica.  Steve said about the use of it the pottery:

“When I first learned to make pottery, the red slip painted in the designs was difficult to work with. It wouldn’t take heat very well and would scorch and turn black. The red was also difficult to polish. My aunt Dextra had a deep red color clay slip and I decided to experiment with it. I took some of our base clay and added the red to it and it polished very well. I then decided to put some mica in there to get that sparkle. That’s where the new red came from, and Dextra liked how it turned out. I introduced them to that. It was nice that for my teacher, Dextra, I was able to share and teach her something.”  Steve Lucas, Spoken Through Clay

Separating the wings and tail are bands of diamond shapes. The jar was traditionally fired and has blushes across the surface.  Steve continues to fire his pottery using sheep dung at his family home in Polacca (at the base of First Mesa, Hopi).  The jar has both an ancient and modern appearance to the design. The tight precision painting gives the jar an impressive appearance.  It is signed on the bottom in the clay, “S. Lucas” and a mudhead (koyemsi) and an ear of corn (corn clan).