Pottery: wedding vase

Pottery: wedding vase

Cherokee pottery

Handicraft

Pottery

This double-spouted wedding vase was made from natural, unglazed clay; the outside has been burnished. The base is incised with hearts and “Amanda Swimmer". The artist is Amanda Sequoyah Swimmer (b. 1921), a self-taught potter of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The youngest of 12 children, she was born and raised in the Straight Fork section of Big Cove, a remote section of the Qualla Boundary in North Carolina. For many years, she worked at Oconaluftee Indian Village where she was originally hired to demonstrate finger weaving. She quickly switched to pottery, learning from fellow demonstrators. Swimmer uses traditional techniques and tools, never a potter’s wheel. She presses designs onto the surface of the clay with wooden paddles or incises linear designs using sharp stick. The subtle coloration on her pots comes from burning them with different types of wood. The vase was donated to the Southern Highland Craft Guild by the Grovewood Gallery in Asheville, NC.

Swimmer, Amanda

Permanent Collection

Hunter Library Digital Collections, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC 28723

1985-08-22

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/

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crafts (art genres)

StillImage

16500

https://southernappalachiandigitalcollections.org/object/16500

2010-09-27

All rights reserved. For permissions and use, contact Southern Highland Craft Guild Archives, Asheville, NC 28815;

Qualla Boundary

Appalachian Region, Southern

7" x 4" x 4"(dimension)

Craft Revival