Priscilla Namingha

Priscilla Namingha was born in 1924, was Hopi-Tewa and lived in Polacca, First Mesa.[1][2][3] Namingha was the oldest daughter of Rachel Namingha and sister of Dextra Quotskuyva, Lillian Gonzales and Elenor Lucas, all of whom were potters.[4][3] She is a great-granddaughter of potter, Nampeyo.[3] Priscilla Namingha's daughters also went on to become potters.[4] Namingha stated that she learned to create pottery by watching her mother work.[5] As a girl, she also learned pottery techniques from Nampeyo.[1] Namingha kept making pottery almost up to her death in 2008.[1]

Namingha's work is part of the Nampeyo family tradition of pottery making.[1] Her pottery uses "fine-line" decorations and incorporates patterns based on birds and feathers.[3] Namingha used about 20 of the traditional designs created by Nampeyo.[3] The traditional meanings of the designs however, had been lost by the time Namingha's mother was incorporating these patterns and symbols.[3] Her pots are large, often around 20 inches or more in diameter.[6]

Namnigha used clay mined from the First Mesa and processed it by grinding the hard clay and adding ground sandstone to the mixture.[3] Black paint for the decorations is made from the Rocky Mountain bee plant and yellow rock for the reddish color in the designs.[6] She painted with a yucca brush.[6]

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.[6] Between the pots, she placed pot shards and rocks, for air circulation, and then more sheep dung on top.[6] Then the pots would smolder in the fire pit for several hours.[6]

Namingha has done pottery demonstrations and shown her work at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology.[7] She also has work in the collections of the Morgan Collection of Southwest Pueblo Pottery,[8] the Heard Museum, the Hopi Cultural Center Museum, and the Museum of Northern Arizona.[1]

• 360 degree view of pottery