Posted 6 years ago
ddimb
(1 item)
Hello, I have long used this site a learning tool this is my first post. A few years ago I posted these same photos on the eBay pottery board but received no replies. Hoping that I can gain a bit of direction here. Please share your thoughts on this Native American Pot.
Purchased at a hospital thrift store in Paoli, PA sometime around 2007. At the time of that visit I purchased 2 other small pots. To my mind these pieces were the remains of someone's treasured collection. They have been tucked away in my N.A. cabinet since then.
If we believe the writing on the bottom of the pot, it eliminates Garnet Pavatea as the artisan as she was 3 in 1918. Neither does it have the quality of balance that I associate with the Nampeyo family.
Is knowing it to be Hopi related enough of an ID? How much does the writing on the bottom and up the side effect any future value?
I am trying to trim the volume of my collections and provide accurate info on what I have chosen to keep.
Any help provided is most appreciated.
In my opinion, the writing on the bottom decreases, rather than adds to the value, which is usually the case when a former owner has decided to add their (usually inaccurate) notations of thoughts/memories on artifacts. It would be different if the potter had written it, but this is by someone who received it as a gift (from Ted), and somehow acquired the misinformation that it was from the Grand Canyon in 1918.
Do not believe the writing on the bottom. The Hopi have always been very traditional in their pottery. This style of "corrugated" pottery wasn't even made in 1918.
Garnet Pavatea (active 1940-1981) was the first to make this type of plain red pottery, which she decorated with the end of a beer can opener. It makes a larger imprint than the tools used by most potters, and makes her work distinctive, with or without a signature. If this was one of her early corrugated pieces, it wouldn't have been signed, anyway. She made most of her hundreds of corrugated pieces in the late 1960s-1970s.
So even if this was made by someone copying her style, it can't date earlier than the 1960s.
Belated thanks CanyonRoad, for taking time out to share your knowledge and reasoning on this piece.
And thanks to those who expressed appreciation of this lopsided little pot.