Two Hopi Crow Mother Katsina Dolls by Ivan Wytewa & Sheldon Talas

Native American, Hopi Pueblo. A pair of Crow Mother katsina dolls, the taller carved by Ivan Wytewa of Bacavi and the shorter by Sheldon Talas of Polacca, each signed on the underside of the base. Both render Angwusnasomtaqa, or Tumas, in cottonwood root: a green case mask with an inverted black triangle at the mouth, outspread black crow's wings flanking the head, a fox fur ruff at the throat, and a woman's manta beneath a pale ceremonial robe. Talas gives her the Second Mesa attribute, a shallow basketry tray heaped with corn. Wytewa follows the Oraibi convention of yucca whips, though his figure also, curiously, grips a sword. Mother of the Hu katsinam and, for many Hopi, of all katsinam, she presides over the Bean Dance initiations of Powamuya. Sheldon Talas (1937-2010) carved at Polacca, the village at the foot of First Mesa, and took awards at the annual Hopi Show held by the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, a proving ground for carvers of his generation. Ivan Wytewa (b. 1962) works from Bacavi on Third Mesa; he apprenticed under his uncle Tom Holmes, one of the better-known Hopi katsina carvers of the later twentieth century, and his hand shows that lineage in the crisp articulation of the wing feathers. Crow Mother's Hopi name, Angwusnasomtaqa, translates roughly as "man with crow wings tied to," a reminder that katsina personations are danced by men. During Powamuya, the February Bean Dance, Crow Mother leads the Hu or Whipper katsinam who administer the ritual chastisement that initiates Hopi children into the katsina societies, and the yucca whips she carries at Oraibi are the instruments of that rite. The tray of corn carried in the Second Mesa version casts her instead as the giver of the season's first sprouted beans, the promise of the coming harvest. Item # 204875

Estimate:£339.09

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