Priscilla Namingha Nampeyo (1924 - 2008) was a

Hopi-Tewa The Hopi-Tewa (also Tano, Southern Tewa, Hano, Thano, or Arizona Tewa) are a Tewa Pueblo group that resides on the eastern part of the Hopi Reservation on or near First Mesa in northeastern Arizona. Synonymy The name ''Tano'' is a Spanish bo ...

potter who was known for her 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 po ...

. 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 centers.

Early life

Priscilla Namingha was born in 1924, was

and lived in

Polacca A polacca (or ''polacre'') is a type of seventeenth- to nineteenth-century sailing vessel, similar to the xebec. The name is the feminine of "Polish" in the Italian language. The polacca was frequently seen in the Mediterranean. It had two or th ...

, First Mesa. Namingha was the oldest daughter of

Rachel Namingha Rachel () was a Bible, Biblical figure, the favorite of Jacob's two wives, and the mother of Joseph (Genesis), Joseph and Benjamin, two of the twelve progenitors of the tribes of Israel. Rachel's father was Laban (Bible), Laban. Her older siste ...

and sister of

Dextra Quotskuyva Dextra Quotskuyva Nampeyo (born September 7, 1928, Polacca, Arizona) is a Native American potter and artist. She is in the fifth generation of a distinguished ancestral line of Hopi potters. In 1994 Dextra Quotskuyva was proclaimed an “Ariz ...

, Lillian Gonzales and Elenor Lucas, all of whom were potters. She is a great-granddaughter of potter,

Nampeyo Nampeyo (1859 – 1942) was a Hopi-Tewa potter who lived on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona. Her Tewa name was also spelled Num-pa-yu, meaning "snake that does not bite". Her name is also cited as "Nung-beh-yong," Tewa for Sand Snake. She used a ...

. Priscilla Namingha's daughters also went on to become potters. Namingha stated that she learned to create pottery by watching her mother work. As a girl, she also learned pottery techniques from Nampeyo. Namingha kept making pottery almost up to her death in 2008.

Work

Namingha's work is part of the

family tradition of pottery making. Her

uses "fine-line" decorations and incorporates patterns based on birds and feathers. Namingha used about 20 of the traditional designs created by Nampeyo. The traditional meanings of the designs however, had been lost by the time Namingha's mother was incorporating these patterns and symbols. Her pots are large, often around 20 inches or more in

diameter In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest chord of the circle. Both definitions are also valid fo ...

. Namnigha used

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 part ...

mined from the First Mesa and processed it by grinding the hard clay and adding ground

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates ...

to the mixture. Black paint for the decorations is made from the

Rocky Mountain bee plant ''Cleomella serrulata'' (syns. ''Cleome serrulata'' and ''Peritoma serrulata''), commonly known as Rocky Mountain beeplant/beeweed, stinking-clover, bee spider-flower, skunk weed, Navajo spinach, and guaco, is a species of annual plant in the ge ...

and yellow rock for the reddish color in the designs. She painted with a

yucca ''Yucca'' is a genus of perennial shrubs and trees in the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Agavoideae. Its 40–50 species are notable for their rosettes of evergreen, tough, sword-shaped leaves and large terminal panicles of white or whitish ...

brush. She fired her pottery in the ground, first burning wood into charcoal and then laying around 8 to 10 pots on top of the coal and added sheep dung. Between the pots, she placed pot shards and rocks, for air circulation, and then more sheep dung on top. Then the pots would smolder in the fire pit for several hours. Namingha has done pottery demonstrations and shown her work at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. She also has work in the collections of the Morgan Collection of Southwest Pueblo Pottery, the

Heard Museum The Heard Museum is a private, not-for-profit museum in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, dedicated to the advancement of American Indian art. It presents the stories of American Indian people from a first-person perspective, as well as exhibiti ...

, the Hopi Cultural Center Museum, and the

Museum of Northern Arizona The Museum of Northern Arizona is a museum in Flagstaff, Arizona, United States, that was established as a repository for Indigenous material and natural history specimens from the Colorado Plateau. The museum was founded in 1928 by zoologist ...

References

Sources

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External links

360 degree view of pottery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Namingha, Priscilla 1924 births 2008 deaths Hopi people Tewa American potters Artists from Arizona Native American potters Native American women artists Women potters 20th-century ceramists 20th-century American women artists American women ceramists American ceramists 20th-century Native Americans 21st-century Native Americans 20th-century Native American women 21st-century Native American women Native American people from Arizona