Craft: An American History

by Glenn Adamson

Yet Native artisans, sizing up the situation, strategically embraced the idea of authenticity, as a way of both articulating their own identity and positioning their work in new markets. Among the first and most prominent makers to adopt this complex position was the potter Nampeyo (Nung-beh-yong, translated as “Sand Snake” or “Harmless Snake”). She was born in about 1860 to a Hopi father and a Tewa mother, in what is now the state of Arizona. The Hopi, along with the Zuni and Acoma peoples, consider the ancient Puebloans to be their ancestors. And Nampeyo was indeed an inheritor of tradition. She learned to make pottery from her paternal grandmother, and already at the age of fifteen she was photographed at her home on First Mesa by visiting geographical surveyors—the first of many times that her image would be captured and reproduced as an emblem of Hopi culture.