This is an elegant jar by Nancy Youngblood.  The jar is coil built and the designs are carved into the clay.  The body of the jar is very deeply carved with an avanyu.  It is almost 1/4″ deep for the carving. The avanyu encircles the jar and note how the body is made up of water swirls and lightning designs.  While the deep carving on the body of the jar is striking, the neck is what captures the light. There are 16 swirling melon ribs cut deeply into the clay and extending up to the rim. Each rib is perfectly polished.  The rim of the jar has a “raindrop” undulation and where each of the ribs meets the rim they are rounded out.  It is always technically difficult to create a rim of such complexity and not have it break during the polishing!  The polishing of the ribs is always a challenge as one considers that each rib has two “sides” to be polished and the surface area of the piece is about double its size!  Nancy has won numerous awards for her melon bowls and this is a creative variation of her work.  It was made in 1999 and it is in excellent condition with no chips, cracks, restoration or repair.  It is signed on the bottom in the clay, “Nancy Youngblood”.  Nancy said of this style of her pottery:

“I got the idea from seeing a picture of Sara Fina’s work. Her jar had a fluted top, and the swirl went from the left to the right and ended at the raised rainbow band on the shoulder. The bottom was plain. I wanted to take the shape and make it uniquely mine. I deliberately curved in my fluted rim to make it more distinctive. Technically, this is one of the most difficult pieces to polish because you are continually flipping it around. You polish one side of a rib, and then you have to flip it real fast and polish the other side.” Nancy Youngblood, Spoken Through Clay