This is a very detailed lidded jar by Nancy Youngblood.  The jar is coil-built and then carved and stone polished.  Around the shoulder there are eight carved shells.  Each shell has 12 rounded edges that are carved into the clay. When Nancy carves the shells, the “ridges” are each rounded, just like they are on her melon bowl!  They are very time involved and create their own, “ribs”.  The eight shells with 12 sections create a total of 96 carved ribs on the shells!  The remainder of the area is matte in contrast to the polished sells. The jar has a lid that fits perfectly into the top of the bowl.  It has a double shell with 15 sections on each side, for a total of 30!  While it may appear to be a simple piece, there is a lot of complexity to the detail on each shell.  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.  The jar and lid were fired a glassy black coloration.  It is signed on the bottom, “Nancy Youngblood”, 2005.  It is in excellent condition with no chips, cracks, restoration, or repair.  Nancy has won numerous awards for her pottery, and this is undoubtedly a creative use of her melon rib style!

“The shell, I first started doing that around 1980. I had seen shells when I went to the Caribbean, and I thought that they would look spectacular if I could carve and polish them. For the tan color, instead of using a clay slip on the piece, we wet it with water and then polish the dampened clay. It can be harder to polish and, unless every rib is perfectly smooth with no indentations, it shows every imperfection. You fire it the way you would a red piece. Instead of covering it up with the manure, you pull the wood off and let it cool down slowly. You want to get that deep buckskin color.” Nancy Youngblood, Spoken Through Clay