Students > Navajo Pottery > Lesson 1: Introduction

INTRODUCTION TO NAVAJO POTTERY AND ITS MAKERS

In this lesson you will:

• name several Navajo potters and recognize Navajo pots
  
• explain the role of Navajo potters within the community
  
• identify the characteristic forms of Navajo pots
  
• explain the differences between traditional and newer forms of Navajo pottery and the reasons for these differences
  (This satisfies Arizona Visual Arts Standards 2AV-P4: PO2 and 2AV-P1: PO2)

A LOOK AT NAVAJO POTTERY AND WHERE IT IS MADE

Navajo potters have traditionally made pots that are beautiful and useful. They are guided by certain cultural and spiritual beliefs about the proper ways to make and fire pots. There are important stories about the origins of potmaking among the people. While pottery follows silversmithing and rugweaving in popularity among the art forms made by Navajo people, it holds an important place in the history of the people. Many people, both men and women, make and sell their pottery. These objects may be very traditional in Navajo design or they may be adaptations of ideas from other Native American traditions or from mainstream styles. They may use all natural materials and fire in an outdoor pit or they may purchase clays and glazes and use modern electric kilns and other manufactured tools and materials.

Before you learn more about Navajo pottery, explore a bit about the Navajo Nation: where it is and what the natural world is like there. The Navajo Nation is found in the Northeast corner of Arizona and actually encompasses parts of adjacent Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. Check out the maps (http://www.navajo.org/maps.html).

For the most part, the Navajo Nation is comprised of high desert where temperatures can shift from very hot to very cold over the course of a few hours. There is snow in the winter, but the sun usually melts it during the daytime. Spring storms bring much needed moisture to the land. In the summer it is quite dry and the wind can blow fiercely, raising clouds of red sand into the air. The altitude is above 7000 feet. There are canyons and plateaus, mesas and washes. Juniper, pinon, and sagebrush are the main plants. Other kinds of plants can be found as well. These plants are used for medicines, for dyes for wool used in weaving and for food. Rabbits, deer, mule deer, timberwolves, coyotes, and mountain lions live in close range. Beneath the mesas are coal and uranium which is much prized by utility companies and which generates income for the tribe, but these minerals lie beneath grazing land and sites sacred to the Navajo people. The action of wind and water over the land has created rich and varied deposits of clay all over the reservation. This natural material has been well used for making pottery. The effects of weather on the land over eons has produced rich deposits of clays that are collected and used by the people for making their pottery. Potters learn to recognize good clay from looking at it, touching it, smelling it, and even from tasting it.

Traditional life on the reservation would be considered a hard life by most of us. The traditional Navajo people lived then and many continue now to live a certain lifestyle. It is based in a belief that they belong to the earth. The earth does not belong to humans. It is the responsibility of humans to protect the earth, to give back to it for everything we take from it. People pray to the East each morning that they will have good thoughts and remain in harmony with their surroundings. The day is spent planting corn and squash, and hoeing weeds. Food must be hunted, grown or gathered with good intention. In earlier days there was less dependence on commercial products. People were more self-reliant. Families worked hard at home together.

There was no television, no telephone, no movies or even radio. People traveled a long distance by foot, horse, or wagon to visit neighbors, relatives or the trading post. These trips might take many hours or days. Still today many families living on the land do not have running water, electricity, central heating or phones in their homes.

Women play a different role in Navajo culture than they do in many others. They are the caretakers. A woman maintains and passes down the traditional values to the next generation. She makes the important decisions. It is a matrilineal society, meaning, for one thing, that when a woman marries, her husband comes to live with her family on her land. He may bring some sheep, his horse or pickup truck, but the land and the herds and all important decisions relating to them are the responsibility of the woman. Children are born to the mother's clan. Relationships are traced back first through the woman's clans. Women were, and still continue to be, important leaders in their world.

Originally, and until the late 1800s when the railroad was built through Navajo lands and trading posts were established, women made pottery primarily for home use. They made cooking pots and bowls a variety of storage containers. They also made pipes and other objects for ceremonial purposes. When the trading posts brought in glass jars, metal cooking pots, and crockery of various kinds the need for making these things decreased. As a result, the quality of pottery declined as fewer people perfected the craft.

In the 1960s, as new markets for traditional crafts expanded, Navajo potters began to produce pots for the tourists and collectors of Indian art. One trader, Bill Beaver, of the Sacred Mountain Trading Post, located northeast of Flagstaff AZ on Highway 89A has been particularly important in bringing Navajo pottery into the mainstream. He has encouraged potters to make different forms and styles that can be identified as the work of particular artists. Though potters were traditionally women, many men now make pottery as well.

Navajo pottery does not have the refinement of the pottery of some other tribes of the Southwest. But it plays an important role in Navajo culture and the processes used to make it are common to the handbuilding techniques used by potters all over the world. To view some examples of Navajo pottery visit the Foutz Trading Post (http://www.foutzrug.com/pottery/) and the Shiprock Trading Post (http://www.ShiprockTrading.com/)

Now, complete Worksheet 1.

AN INTRODUCTION TO SOME WELL KNOWN NAVAJO POTTERS

Read the following. Then you will be asked to write a report.

There are a number of well-known Navajo potters living and working on the Navajo Nation. Some of them makes pots for a living, others have other jobs and make pots in addition to their other work. Below are brief introductions to several potters. Read the introduction, check out the web site or photograph of the potter's pots, and be prepared to write a short paper about these artists.

Alice Cling (http://www.chimayoarts.com/navajo.htm) has developed a very contemporary style. Notice the evidence of the fire cloud on her pot. She lives in the Shonto area between Tuba City and Kayenta and works at the elementary school as an instructional aide.

She learned to make pottery when she was a girl. Her mother, another prominent potter taught her. She adds very little decoration to her pots, but depends on graceful shapes, highly polished surfaces, and distinctive square top opening to make a beautiful pot.

Jimmy Wilson (http://www.swshopmall.com/
premier-bin/shop.pl/page=ntrad-pot-gr.html/SID=380521825) lives right by Leupp Public School in Leupp AZ. He and his wife make pots with Navajo images from Creation stories drawn on their surface and sometimes colored. Wilson makes shallow, incised (carved in) geometric designs of Navajo holy people on his pots. He also makes appliqued designs on some of his pots.

Betty Manygoats often decorates her pots with horned toads.

The horned toad is believed to be Grandfather, the Creator, in animal form. As such, he is thought to bring good luck to us.

Faye Tso is an important elder in the Tuba City area. In addition to making pots she is a medicine woman who heals with herbs and ceremonies. Her pots are quite large and she makes designs on some of them with thin coils of clay that she presses on the surface of the pot to create images from Navajo stories. She also makes dishes in animal forms.

Her husband and many of her children and grandchildren also make pots.

Bertha and Silas Claw live between Tuba City and Kayenta. They introduced the idea of using paints on the appliqued designs. Bertha usually makes the pot forms and Silas adds the applique work. Applique is the process of adding figures of corn, sheep, etc. to the surface of the pot using slip (a very liquid form of clay) as a kind of glue. They make pots that include images that reflect holidays like Halloween and Christmas, as well as more traditional Navajo images of hogans and sheep. They use clay from a location not used by other potters in the area. You will read more about them and their work in the lesson on the the philosophy of Navajo pottery.

You should now be ready to complete Assignment 1 by writing the report about Navajo potters.