This is a detailed water jar by Dextra Quostkuyva Nampeyo.  She was certainly one of the most influential Hopi-Tewa potters of the last 50 years. Not only did she teach numerous potters (Steve Lucas, Yvonne Lucas, Les Namingha, Loren Ami, Hisi Nampeyo, to name just a few), but her creative designs and forms have dramatically influenced the pottery itself.  The jar is from a period in the late 1980s/early 1990s when she started making this small water jar shape. The designs are painted with bee-weed and the red areas are polished.  The side of the jar has three Sikyatki birds with their tail feathers on one side and the heads across and below the shoulder.  The bodies of the birds consist of traditional Hopi-Tewa designs.  Extending down from the neck is a red polished lightning design.  The jar was traditionally fired to create blushes on the surface. This piece is signed on the bottom, “Dextra” and an ear of corn for Corn Clan.  It is in very good condition with no chips, cracks, restoration, or repair.  Definitely a classic of her creative clay art!

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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