This is a classic 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 entire piece is fully polished.  There is a central band of design that is painted with bee-weed (black) and brown clay. There are a series of rolling clouds along with bird wings that are extended downward.  Above the clouds is a polished brown area.  This piece is from a period in Dextra’s pottery where she focused on form and simplicity of design, allowing the firing and the clay to have a voice in her clay art. The jar was traditionally fired to create the blushes on the surface.  It is from the 1980s and painted with bee-weed (black) and red clay. 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

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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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