Hopi Pottery is one of the most distinctive styles of all the Pueblo ceramic arts. Generally, the background finish varies from white to a soft brown. The designs are painted with dark brown lines and filled with soft to deeper reddish-brown slips. The heavier and more prominent designs are dark brown.
Different families and potters create their own unique patterns, and you can usually tell what family the pot came from.
The most famous of the Hopi potters was Nampeyo, a Hopi-Tewa Potter who began using designs found in the ruins of the 15th-century Sikyátki ruins on First Mesa. She is a descendant of Hopi and Tewa lineages, which occupy the Pueblos on the Rio Grande, north and south of Santa Fe.
The Spanish returned to reconquer the Pueblo people in 1692, after having been expelled from New Mexico during the Great Pueblo Revolt in 1680. Once again, the Spanish proved to be cruel masters, and in 1696, a second revolt occurred. However, when it failed to drive the Spanish out, hundreds of Tewa people migrated to other places, including Hopi, which the Spanish had not attacked.
When I first visited the Hopi villages in the 1970s, First Mesa was comprised of two communities: Tewa and Hopi. Most Tewa people could speak Hopi and their own language, while the Hopis, although they were part of the same Tanoan language group, didn’t speak the Tanoan language themselves. However, they all participated in the same religious activities. It is somewhat similar to American English and Scottish English. They can understand each other if they speak their own dialect, but it’s not easy.
I was fortunate to have been directed to the home of Nellie Nampeyo, who lived in a small frame house at Polacca, located at the base of First Mesa. I had been on the mesa, wandering from home to home and buying some lovely pottery, when one of her relatives told me I should go and see her. She was the middle daughter of the original Nampeyo, between Annie and Fannie. All three of these women became great potters, carrying on their mother’s legacy.
I was blessed with the opportunity to visit with her more than half a dozen times in the three years before she passed. She was a slight woman with wispy grey hair. She wore long cotton dresses. She reminded me of my great aunt, who had moved to New Mexico to be cured of tuberculosis, and who ended up living about as long as Nellie did. These were tough women, from entirely different backgrounds, who were sweet and kind but didn’t take any guff from anyone. I always wished my aunt had been alive when I knew Nellie so that I could have introduced them.
Nellie fired her pottery in front of her home in the driveway. It was an absolute joy to watch her scrape away the ashes from the fire and remove the broken pot shards that were covering her pots, preventing the wind from blowing the flames against their finishes. Under it all was always a beautiful collection of small pots. One day, as I drove up, a horse came along and ran right through the ashes, sending her precious pots rolling down the driveway! Right behind the horse, Nellie was running and hitting the animal with a broom. Luckily, none of the pots were broken, but she was angry.
It reminded me of the time my great-aunt, then 80 years old, walked into her kitchen to find a cat that had wandered into the house from somewhere, sitting on the table next to her old wood stove, enjoying the soup Auntie was making for dinner. My aunt picked up the 22 caliber rifle that she kept by the back door and shot the cat. You can’t make this stuff up! These two ladies would have gotten along just fine!
By the time I met her, Nellie was making smaller, but still beautiful pots. Most of them had a white background and were painted with Nampeyo-style designs. The pot featured in this newsletter is one that I bought from her, sold back in the 1970s, and was lucky enough to have it returned to sell. It was made 49 years ago.
Nellie died a few years later, but she left a great legacy. Like both of her sisters, she left her mark on the art form, never quit, and helped encourage dozens of relatives who were not even born to become potters.
