This is a very detailed carved bowl by Nancy Youngblood.  The bowl is coil-built and then carved and stone polished.  There are twenty deeply carved shells on this piece. Why shells? Nancy began carving them on her pottery after a trip to the Caribbean in the 1980s.  While it may seem an “exotic” addition to the pottery, shells were frequently traded in pre-contact times and even today are worn by the dancers during traditional Pueblo ceremonies.  When Nancy carves the shells the “ridges” are each rounded, just like on her melon bowl!  They are very time involved and create their own, “ribs”. There are eight shells in the top row and each has seven ribs, the middle rows have eight shells and each of them has nine “ribs”. The bottom of the bowl has 4 shells, again each with nine rounded ribs.  Amazingly, there are 164 rounded sections on the shells that are each individually polished!  WOW!  The bowl was fired a glassy black coloration.  It is signed on the bottom, “Nancy Youngblood”, 2022.  Nancy has won numerous awards for her melon bowls, and this is undoubtedly a creative use of her melon rib style!

Size:  2.5″w x 2.25″h