Chestnut Hiller hooked on Native American pottery

Chestnut Hill resident Yaga Brady, who is also a director at The Stagecrafters Community Theater, collects Native American pottery from the Southwest, created by potters “who believe in the sacredness of the clay they work with.”

by YAGA BRADY

I collect Native American pottery from the Southwest, the hand-coiled, hand-polished, hand-painted, hand-everything wonders created by potters who believe in the sacredness of the clay they work with. I am batty about the stuff, in the same way some people are about stamps, coins or vintage clothing. I was asked recently what actually got me started, and my answer was … Karl May.

Well, for those who want to know, Karl May was a German (1843-1912) who had nothing to do with Indian pottery, but who happened to be one of the most popular authors of American Wild-West adventure stories. May, translated into dozens of languages, is considered a classic of the genre, and his creation, Winnetou, a heroic Apache, is one of the most popular characters in children’s fiction (outside of the USA, that is). As May never set foot outside his native land (actually spending a good portion of his life in prison), misconceptions and errors — linguistic, geographical, historical — abound in his writings. Still, the man’s imagination and writing skills were prodigious. During my very young years, I considered May to be tops, right up there with murder mysteries and The Count of Monte Cristo.

I have no doubt that it was Karl May who was responsible for my first vision of America: the land of brave, free-wheeling white hunters and their kindred spirits, even braver red warriors, who roamed the unending expanses of green prairies and woodlands — protecting the weak, challenging the arrogant, avenging wrongs, shooting, knifing, scalping and having a jolly old time all around.

May’s Indians (except for the very mean Comanches) were almost unflawed, like the chief of the Apaches, Winnetou, who was super-humanly brave and noble and more skilled in the arts of Western survival than anybody on earth. He also had the impeccable manners of a well-bred white gentleman, was physically perfect (chiseled features, tall, graceful) and was impervious to women’s charms; that is, after having loved once and having lost his beloved to a friend.

I grew up in Poland, but as time went on, my vision of America expanded; I learned of gangsters, Coca Cola, skyscrapers, Uncle Tom, Scarlet O’Hara, jazz … but Karl May and Winnetou were always there in the background, looming large. Even at some later day when I knew that May could not be taken entirely at face value, my fascination with Indians did not diminish. Naturally, once I found myself on American soil, I could not wait to meet REAL Indians. But there were none to be found, it seemed. Or I did not know anybody who would point them out to me. It was only some months after my arrival that I met a young man, an Indian buff, who took me on a trip to the Southwest and showed me some Indians in the flesh. (By the way, I married that young man shortly thereafter.)

The first ones I met were the Hopis in their severe rocky desert domain. No green pastures or woodlands there; no swift-legged horses or warriors waving tomahawks. Just ordinary men and women — very ordinary — trudging along their dusty roads, short and heavy-set, cheaply dressed, quieter than anybody I had ever met, often with impassive looks and excessively wrinkled faces. Certainly not as well off as other Americans I had seen, a little sadder perhaps. May’s vision of the Beautiful Indian was gone.

But then something astonishing happened. I was approached by a Hopi woman who asked me to look at some of the clay pots she was making. She handed me a small reddish-brown bowl, hand-coiled, polished to perfection, painted with an intricate black design, which, she explained, symbolized rain, clouds and the honoring of truth and wisdom. She painted it free-hand (though she did not use that phrase).

The bowl looked so attractive and felt so good to the touch that I bought it on the spot. On that first trip to the Wild West I bought several more pieces, coming from different locales: Hopi, Santa Clara, Zia. … Each item became a new discovery and a new thrill. A bowl with a stylized bear paw incised in its shiny black surface. A vase encircled by a carnelian snake-like creature painted on chalky gray. A figure of a storyteller with an oversized head, closed eyes and a huge open mouth. I was hooked. It was as if suddenly the spirit of the charmed Indian I believed in as a child had entered the clay wrought by the hands of real-life Indian potters.

Together with my husband I have been now collecting Indian pottery for the last 37 years. We think of our pieces as “art” and their creators as “artists.” We travel to the Southwest regularly; we search, hunt, look; and we inevitably find something new. We marvel how each piece we find seems to reflect — in its design, color and texture — surrounding Nature; the awesome desert of the American Southwest.

Over the years we have learned about the techniques, the people, the tradition, the land. We have also witnessed material advances in the lives of the people and the growth in their self-assertiveness, as well as, appropriately, an escalation in prices for what we want. So we bargain quite a lot, and buy when we can.

Through the centuries, styles and designs of Southwestern clay art have undergone changes and refinements of various kinds; quite a few even within the last few decades. Yet, to my constant amazement, so many things have remained firm. A potter’s wheel, unknown in pre-Columbian days, is not used today either. Commercial paints or modern tools of any kind are shunned. The native clay seems to be held in the same reverence it was generations ago. For the contemporary Indian potter, like for his ancestors, clay things — as made of earth, water, air and fire — are living things, representing life itself and deserving special respect.