Native American Hopi Handbuilt and Handpainted Traditional Pot with Parrots

Description

Native American Hopi Handbuilt and Handpainted Traditional Pot with Parrots by White Swann

Wonderful handbuilt and handpainted pot created by Hopi master potter White Swann. This beautiful piece with pristine painting and a deep red inside the rim has classic Hopi patterns as well as four parrot symbols around the pot. The parrot is credited with bringing abundant summer growth to the corn crops on the Mesas. The shape is a standard for the Hopi potter. I love the band of designs around the lower part of this piece. The small symbols include deer, turtle, corn, rain, migration, friendship and others.

White Swann (Dolly Joe Navasie) learned the art of making pottery early in life by watching and working with her mother, Eunice Navasie.

White Swans digs her clay and processes it in the traditional way. She hand coils her pottery and fires it outdoors with sheep dung. White Swann uses yucca leaves to make her paint brushes. The maroon coloration is achieved with the use of iron oxide. the yellow clay provides the orange finish. Like all the Hopi potters, she is always learning and is now refining her "blush" that is achieved when firing the pots.