This is a striking tall jar by Dextra Quostkuyva Nampeyo.  She is known for her creative designs and forms that have dramatically influenced the world of Hopi-Tewa pottery.  The shape has a high shoulder and short neck.  The jar is fully polished in a vertical “onion-skin” style. This vertical polishing is typical of historic pottery in the southwest.  The rim of the jar is slipped with a brown clay.  The jar is painted on one side with bee-weed (black), white and red clay.  The design is a cardinal (note the red head), which is stylized in the manner of Nampeyo of Hano.  The wings extend downward while the tail feathers extend upward.  The painting has thin, delicate lines for which Dextra was known.  The designs are accentuated with additional white clay.  It was traditionally fired to create the blushes on the surface.  The painting is only on one side, while the remainder is plain.  It is from the 1990s. It is signed, “Dextra” on the bottom with a corn plant for Corn Clan.  It is in excellent condition with no chips, cracks, restoration, or repair.

Dextra said of her early pottery:

“I was watching my mom (Rachel Nampeyo) all the time, and I was picking up everything she was doing. I found my own polishing stones. I would collect clays.  My mother didn’t like it when I did different types of designs. She was different in her ideas. My mother, she went so far as to say that whatever our great-grandmother had reproduced from old designs—those were important designs. We’re supposed to have the basics, she’d say. The big six. Don’t part from that. The six traditional designs. One of them is the migration design, the eagle feather design, the hummingbird design, the horned lizard, the moth design, and parrots. Those are the ones that started with Lesso and Nampeyo.  The designs are mainly from Sikyatki people—it was their pottery that was dug out when they were excavating. They were beautiful designs they had used quite a bit.”  Dextra Quotskuyva, Spoken Through Clay