This is a classic bowl by Dextra Quostkuyva Nampeyo.  She is known for her creative designs and forms that have dramatically influenced the world of Hopi-Tewa pottery.  The piece is coil-built and VERY thin walled!  It is taken from a classic design used by both Nampeyo of Hano, and her mother, Rachel. The last photo is a drawing of this design by Rachel Nampeyo from the book Painted Perfection.  This bowl has large red polished birds.  Below them is a dragonfly in motion with thin lines for the dragonfly tail and and painted wings.  This piece reveals the evolutionary process of  her pottery designs. There is a classic bird image that then become more complicated with the dragonfly, and yet, from a distance, it almost, ALMOST, has the same appearance.  Fascinating.  The bowl was traditionally fired to create the blushes on the surface.  It is from the 1970s and painted with bee-weed (black) and red clay. It is signed, “Dextra Quotskuyva Nampeyo” 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

Brand

Quotskuyva, Dextra Nampeyo (1928-2019)

Dextra Quotskuyva Nampeyo

Few potters have had such an impact on their art as Dextra.  She was a great-granddaughter of Nampeyo of Hano, descending through her eldest daughter, Annie Healing.  She was one of Hopi's most creative, innovative, and influential potters for almost forty years.  She is also the mother of famed painter Dan Namingha and potter Hisi Quotskuyva.  She taught Steve Lucas, Loren Ami, Yvonne Lucas, and Les Namingha to make pottery, resulting in Hopi pottery's nearly unprecedented influence.  Dextra used the bee-weed plant for the black and native clay slips for the red.  Dextra's pottery can be found in numerous museums' permanent collections and has been the subject of a book and exhibition at the Wheelwright Museum entitled "Painted Perfection."  Dextra Quotskuyva Nampeyo uses traditional Hopi pottery methods in hand coil construction, stone polish, paint, and open fire.

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