This is one of the few 64 rib melon bowls by Nancy Youngblood. She does not make many of the 64 rib pieces as they are time-consuming in the carving and the polishing.  This bowl is from 1983 and it each of the 64 ribs is deeply and evenly carved into the clay. One of the visually dynamic aspects of this piece is not only the number of ribs but how close together they are on the bowl!  Here they are very deeply carved and each rib is fully polished.  Take a moment and look at the photo of the top of the bowl.  I tried to take the photo to show the depth of the ribs and their symmetry.  Nancy has a particular polishing stone that allows her to polish deep on the sides of each rib.  Consider as well that the polishing on this piece takes an extraordinary amount of time.  Each rib has two “sides” to be polished and the surface area of the piece is about double its size!  Each rib ends at a small “point” on the mouth of the piece.  Again, so many opportunities for it to chip or crack during the carving or polishing.  The bowl is amazing when held, as with the depth of the ribs, it almost feels as if it is floating in your hands!  Nancy has won numerous awards for her melon bowls and this is undoubtedly a visual and technical classic of her style.  This piece is in excellent condition with no chips, cracks, restoration, or repair.  It is signed on the bottom in the clay, “Nancy Youngblood Cutler”.

Nancy said of her sixty-four ribbed pieces:

“I haven’t done that many of these with the sixty-four ribs because it’s a lot of surface area to polish. I always want to technically challenge myself. The only way I can do that is to carve something and say, “I wonder if I could polish that” and then sit down and see if I can.  You can see how the light catches each rib equally. It tells me that I got those ribs just right.”  Nancy Youngblood, Spoken Through Clay