WOW!  This is a spectacular large jar by Nancy Youngblood.  The jar is large and carved with both “flame’ or free-flowing designs and swirling melon ribs. The jar is one of her few red pieces and the coloration is spectacular. She carved the sections of the jar to create a distinctive flow of design that draws the eye across the surface of the piece.  The ribs are deeply carved and highly polished.  Nancy always takes time to think about the angle of her carved ribs and how they will reflect the light. Consider that each rib has two “sides” to be polished and the surface area of the piece is about double its size!  The outdoor firing of red pottery is always more risky, as it is hard to predict the final coloration but exciting when it turns out this perfect!  The jar is signed on the bottom, “Nancy Youngblood”.  It is also featured on the front cover of Native Art Magazine, which is a great additional provenance for this piece!  Nancy has won numerous awards for her melon bowls and this is undoubtedly a classic of her style, most recently the 2018 “Best of Pottery” at Santa Fe Indian Market.

This “S” swirl starts with the rib on the right, then it goes to the left, to the right, to the left to the right to the left to the right, and finally to the left. It’s three times on the right and three times on the left. It is extremely difficult to polish because you are moving your hand right to left to right to left as quickly as you can. Then you have to flip the pot over and do it the opposite way.  Technically, this is one of the most difficult pieces to polish because you are continually flipping it around. I call that an S swirl. My grandmother was doing pieces a long time ago with that S swirl and so was my uncle Camilo. I saw a piece of my uncle Camilo’s pottery at a gallery here in Santa Fe. It was just a vase, but it had the big swirls on it all the way around. I wanted to make something uniquely mine and not copy theirs so that’s why I created these very intricate swirls.” Nancy Youngblood, Spoken Through ClayNancy Youngblood, Spoken Through Clay