Youngblood, Nancy – 16 Rib Deep “S Swirl” Tall Jar with Shell Lid
$ 12,000.00
WOW! This is a striking jar by Nancy Youngblood. She is renowned for her deeply carved and highly polished pottery. This is a classic deep-carved slant swirl melon jar. The ribs extend from the rim to the base. The are VERY Deeply carved and the jar has an elongated form. Each rib is deeply carved, making them more dynamic with the polishing. The entire jar is fully polished, which takes an extraordinary amount of time. Consider that each rib has two “sides” to be polished and the surface area of the piece is about double its size! Each rib also comes to a “point” or edge, which adds to the difficulty as she has to take care not to chip or crack the edge of the rib during the polishing stage. The jar has a shell lid with 9 rounded “ribs” on each side of the shells. The piece is fired a deep black. It is signed on the bottom in the clay, “Nancy Youngblood”. Nancy says of this style:
“My slant swirl starts on the left and goes halfway around the pot. Half of the slant goes to the center part of the pot, and the other half goes to the other half of the pot. If you divide it up, this whole swirl will go halfway around the piece. I’d never seen anybody do a slant like that before. There’s a formula to doing it. It’s hard to explain how I do it, unless you see it. If you get distracted and you just move that line over just a little, it throws your whole design off. It can’t be even a fraction off.” Nancy Youngblood, Spoken Through Clay
In stock
Nancy Youngblood is renowned for her deeply carved and highly polished pottery. This is a classic deep-carved “S” swirl melon jar. The ribs swirl back and forth three times. They each have a sharp edge and are perfectly angled for the light to reflect off each rib. Note the depth of the carving on this jar! The entire jar is fully polished, which takes an extraordinary amount of time. Consider that each rib has two “sides” to be polished and the surface area of the piece is about double its size! Each rib also comes to a “point” or edge, which adds to the difficulty as she has to take care not to chip or crack the edge of the rib during the polishing stage. The piece is fired a deep black. It is signed on the bottom in the clay, “Nancy Youngblood”. Nancy has won numerous awards for her melon bowls and this is undoubtedly a classic of her style!
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 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 Clay
