FROG WOMAN Hallmarks
Paqua Naha, Joy Navasie and family
by Dennis June
Affectionately known among her family and villagers was the original FROG WOMAN, Paqua Naha. She was born about 1890 in the Hopi First Mesa village of Hano, a Tewa stronghold established through Hopi invitation centuries ago as a protective barrier against marauding Navajo raiders
Paqua, (whose name means ‘frog’) was an active potter as early as 1910 until her passing about 1955. As with most Hopi, Paqua was a gentle soul, busily rearing her family and providing trading post goods with the sale of her pottery. She was known to produce traditional jars, bowls and cylinder vases in a wide range of color combinations including redware, black on red, black & white on red, and black & red on yellow.
Paqua participated in two major features of Hopi pottery history; first, she developed her wildly popular FROG WOMAN hallmark and, second, she and her daughter, Joy Navasie, collaborated on perfecting the black & red on WHITE combination.
Traditional Hopi pottery wants to emerge from the pit firing kiln with a warm, inviting golden-orange color. Paqua and Joy learned to create pearl white vessels. The process of producing white pottery has been such a well guarded secret that, for years, any white Hopi pottery was automatically assumed to be Frog Woman.
It is not exactly known when Paqua started using a FROG hallmark on her wares, but her marked pottery is well represented in private and corporate Hopi collections as well as the Museum of Northern Arizona and Heard Museum in Phoenix (among others). Documented sales of Paqua Naha pottery in recent years range up to, $7,500 with Paqua’s popular 6” jars, in good condition, selling $1,000-$1,500.
Because Paqua spawned a family heritage with her unique FROG trademark, it became incumbent upon youngsters to add their own twist. As a result, there are ‘numerous Frog Woman potters,’ chief among them Paqua’s daughter Joy Navasie whose potting skills are recognized among the best in Hopi history.
Joy differentiated her work from her mother’s by producing a Frog Woman hallmark of her own. It differed in a number of subtle ways from that of her mother, more amorphous, lacking a simple combination of shapes, utilizing flowing lines instead.
Paqua’s hallmark, for instance, began as an inverted bell shape with a narrow protruding dome atop. The legs sprouted from the bell and eyes were set atop the dome. Earlier Paqua hallmarks show well separated lower legs. The frog body is decorated with a “stippling” inside the frog body, likely applied with a chewed yucca leaf. Paqua typically applied the stippling in an orderly line fashion, angling from lower right to upper left.
Joy stippled her hallmarks similarly but typically in a more horizontal fashion (sometimes stacked). Joy must have influenced Paqua, as Paqua’s later vessels often share this horizontal format.
The shape of Joy’s frog hallmark could be viewed as a modern interpretation of her mother’s, lacking the round-ish body and protruding head, Joy’s frogs were fashioned deftly with a more pointed nostril and an even, flowing transition from head, across shoulders, to the bulging body. Joy’s frog arms are more defined than those of Paqua (which are just parallel rounding curves).
Significantly, Joy’s frog hind legs are more generous in bulk, with flowing lines that nearly join together at the crotch, where Paqua’s frog hind legs were smaller and set wide apart. Interestingly, in Paqua’s later years, her frog hind legs began to merge, like Joy’s, so much so that many experts would agree that it takes more than a quick glance to differentiate Joy from Paqua in later years.
To her credit, Joy added a ‘J’ to differentiate her hallmark from her mother’s. In early years, the ‘J’ was obscured by serving as a platform for the frog, floating below it, always with a subtle hook underneath, (signifying the ‘J’). Later, the initial migrated to a place alongside the frog hallmark.
After Paqua’s passing in the mid-50’s, Joy abandoned the ‘J’ using the frog hallmark as she had otherwise designed it. And, when her own children began applying the frog hallmark on their work as well, each distinguished hers with the initial system Joy herself pioneered with Paqua.
The main distinguishing feature of Paqua’s hallmark is that her frogs seem to have ‘fingers,’ whereas Joy’s (and other’s) frogs seem to have web feet. No initialed frog hallmark can be attributed to Paqua, only to her progeny.
A very nice tribute to Paqua, Joy and her ‘Frog Woman family’ can be found in numerous books, pamphlets, flyer and publications; honored recently in the following:
Schaaf, Gregory, Hopi-Tewa Pottery, 500 Artist Biographies, CIAC Publishing, Santa Fe, 1998.
I hope to learn how to add photos of some hallmarks to help others identify PAQUA Frog Woman pottery. Additional input, elaboration, correction and comment from knowledgeable specialists is welcome.
Hopi Frog Woman Hallmark samples (differentiate between Paqua and Joy)
