Ida Sahmie (born Nobell 1960) is a

Navajo The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United ...

potter. Sahmie combines

Hopi The Hopi are a Native American ethnic group who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona, United States. As of the 2010 census, there are 19,338 Hopi in the country. The Hopi Tribe is a sovereign nation within the Unite ...

traditional

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and por ...

making methods and Navajo iconography in her work. She has work in the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

and the

Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian is a museum devoted to Native American arts. It is located in Santa Fe, New Mexico and was founded in 1937 by Mary Cabot Wheelwright, who came from Boston, and Hastiin Klah, a Navajo singer and medici ...

Biography

Sahmie is

and was born in 1960 outside of

Pine Springs, Arizona Pine Springs is a populated place situated in Apache County, Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 state ...

. She married a

man, Andrew "Louie" Sahmie, and moved to the

Hopi reservation The Hopi Reservation ( Hopi: Hopituskwa) is a Native American reservation for the Hopi and Arizona Tewa people, surrounded entirely by the Navajo Nation, in Navajo and Coconino counties in north-eastern Arizona, United States. The site has ...

. She learned

making from her mother in law,

Priscilla Namingha Priscilla Namingha Nampeyo (1924 - 2008) was a Hopi-Tewa potter who was known for her traditional pottery. Namingha mined her own clay and created her own pigments for her large pots. Her work is in the collection of several museums and cultural ce ...

. Sahmie began to sell her pottery in the 1980s.

Work

The shape of the pottery that Sahmie makes is based on

traditions and incorporates traditional

designs and iconography, such as ''Yei'' designs. Sahmie prefers to use

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

mined from the Navajo reservation and uses white and yellow clay in the body of the pots. Black slip is created by adding wild spinach to the mixture. Pots are fired outdoors using traditional methods. Sahmie has work in the

, and the

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sahmie, Ida Living people 1960 births Navajo artists Native American women artists Native American potters Indigenous women of the Americas Women potters American potters 20th-century American ceramists 20th-century American women artists American women ceramists 21st-century American ceramists 20th-century Native American artists 21st-century Native American artists 20th-century Native American women 21st-century Native American women