Rose Williams. Navajo Pitcher w/ Two Teacups. 8" x 6". Signed For Sale

Details

Tribe: Navajo

Artist: Rose Williams

Pottery Construction: Hand Coiled

Type of Pottery: Pitcher and (2) Cups

Firing Method: Outdoor Wood Fireplace (Traditional Navajo Firing Technique)

Era: Contemporary (1980’s- present)

Age: Circa 1980’s- early 2000’s

Item Weight: 3.5 lbs

Width: 5.5"

Height: 8"

Condition: Excellent, Missing lid is reflected in price

ID Number: #9

Rose Williams is acknowledged as the matriarch of modern Navajo pottery, taking Navajo pottery from a strictly utilitarian object and defining a new aesthetic for contemporary Navajo clay artists. Before her death in 2015, at the age of 101, Rose Williams was declared a “living treasure”.

Rose Williams was a member of the Lo’kaa’dine’ Clan, (Reed People), in the Shonto/Cow Springs area of the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, not far from Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park and Black Mesa. Rose was taught to make traditional pottery by her aunt, Grace Barlow, who had raised Rose in Shonto. Traditional pieces are fully hand-made. The clay is dug by hand from a seam on their land, diligently prepared for use by screening out impurities, rolled into coils that are built to form the structure and shape of the pot, fired in an outdoor fire and finally coated with a thin layer of pitch pine which both waterproofs the pottery and enhances the color of the fired clay.

When her husband died, Rose began producing pottery which, at that time, was primarily used for utilitarian and ceremonial purposes. Because a medicine man in the 1880s had warned against excessive decoration, Navajo pottery was generally unembellished. There were few decorations on Rose’s pottery beside an occasional “biyo” rope along the rim. Most of Rose’s early pottery was purchased by other Navajo for ceremonial and utilitarian purposes. The tourist and trader market seemed to favor the more highly decorated and hand painted pottery of the pueblos closer to railroads near Albuquerque. In time, the shapes of Rose William’s pots and the strength of their simplicity gained the attention of collectors at fairs and local, national and international museums sought her work.

Rose Williams taught pottery-making to many other Navajos. Of Rose’s fifteen children three of her daughters became highly recognized well-known potters - Alice Cling, Susie Williams Crank and Sue Williams. She also taught Faye Tsao, Louise Goodman, Silas Claw and her daughter-in-law Lorraine Yazzie Williams.

I, the seller, was honored to meet Rose Williams in her Cow Springs home. She spoke little English but, in her 90s, she was very cheery and spry. The last picture is me with Rose Williams.

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