Nampeyo

Nampeyo was a Hopi-Tewa potter who lived from 1859 to 1942 on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona. Her Tewa name is also spelled Num-pa-yu, meaning snake that does not bite, and is also cited as Nung-beh-yong, Tewa for Sand Snake. She used ancient techniques for making and firing pottery, drawing on designs from Old Hopi pottery and on shards found at the fifteenth-century Sikyatki ruins on First Mesa, and her work is held in collections across the United States and Europe, including the National Museum of American Art, the Museum of Northern Arizona, the Spurlock Museum and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. One of her decorated ceramic pots set a world record for Southwest American Indian pottery when it sold for 350,000 dollars at Bonhams Auction House in San Francisco on 6 December 2010.