Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) Fine White Pottery by Jacquie Stevens

Late 20th Century

6.125" H x 6.25" D

Hand Coiled White Jar with a Double Wavy Line Around Neck in a Bulbous Body Shape and Signed on the Bottom

From a Private Colorado Collection

In Very Good Condition

Jacquie Stevens is best known for the simple use of forms on her pottery.  Over the years, she brought an unexpected dimension to Native pottery with her immense, undulating vessels. Her Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) ancestry inspired her to add basket weaving and other materials as embellishments to her undecorated forms.

“The ceramics of Jacquie Stevens are to the casual observer beautiful, lyrical ware, but on a more subtle level, they are often subliminal statements about sensuous shapes, and the texture and volume of the human body—in an age when television advertising (not figurative painting or sculpture) has capitalized most powerfully on people’s love of and need for the truly human in their lives. Stevens’s work is also intellectual, playing on the ceramic traditions of potters from all over the world. Even when she is not working metaphorically, the artist’s involvement with texture, whether it be of scored clay, embellishments of beads, or the smoothness of hides, is her hallmark.”  Spoken Through Clay

Jacquie Stevens (born 1949), a Hochungra (Winnebago/Ho-Chunk) artist, is renowned for creating asymmetrical, minimalist white micaceous pottery that often incorporates fiber, wicker, and stone elements. 

Raised in Nebraska and mentored by Hopi potter Otellie Loloma at the Institute of American Indian Art, Stevens pioneered the coiling of large, off-round vessels.  Her work is characterized by unglazed, scraped clay surfaces and the use of mica-infused clay sourced from Taos, New Mexico, which adds a distinctive shimmer to her pieces. 

• Style: Monumental, minimalist forms with organic, non-symmetrical shapes.

• Materials: White micaceous clay, often combined with cow dung pit-firing to create unique "fire cloud" effects.

• Innovations: First Native American potter to coil large, off-round vessel shapes; frequently integrates leather, reeds, or wood into the pristine clay forms. ecognition: Multiple award winner at the Santa Fe Indian Market