ABSTRACT
Seeking an anniversary gift for old friends in 1997, my wife Annette, son Jeremy, and I visited the homes and shops of a dozen or so Hopi potters on First Mesa, Arizona. Beyond admiring pots of consummate artistic merit, I was fascinating by the discourses between potters and their visitors. Without prompting, potters divulged the meanings of their painted designs to utter strangers. In one home, for example, the potter gently grasped a small jar, still warm from firing, and pointed to the design she had painted repeatedly around the pot. It was, she said, a “water bird.” This design was apparently laden with traditional meanings that we were privileged to share.
