FAYE TSO, COAL MINE MESA
COMMUNITY (1934-2004)
Traditional Dine' (Navajo) Pottery
The Broken Pot*
(In memory of Faye Tso, 1934-2004)
Unmendable, the soft-baked clay
dark with fireclouds can only partly join again.
The ram's legs are askew, its body stretched,
the rainbow bands off-center,
nothing as it was.
Inside, the fire burned so hot
the base became like glass--
jet black and stark as Coal Mine Mesa
where the clay was dug.
These shattered pieces also will not fit.
Her time has passed.
And yet the thumbprint left within remains,
the earth-red arc, the handles like her hands that shaped
and gripped life hard--this thick-walled heavy pot,
the storm, the rain it called,
the sheep it fed.
(©10/1/04 Carol Snyder Halberstadt)
*Early this year, and months before her passing, I purchased this pot by Faye Tso, which she had made in 1970. It arrived from Albuquerque broken into many pieces. I've been piecing it together slowly, but it will never be able to be wholly restored. After I heard of Faye's passing, I wrote this poem to honor her memory.
Faye Tso, herbalist and healer, was one of the
master Dine' (Navajo) potters. "Relocated" from her
home on Coal Mine Mesa, she always returned there to dig the
clay and gather the pinyon from which to extract the pitch resin
that coat and seal traditional Dine' pottery. Her work has been
exhibited at the Northern Arizona University and Heard museums,
and is featured in The People Speak: Navajo Folk Art,
by Chuck and Jan Rosenak (Northland Publishing, Flagstaff, AZ,
1994). I took this photo in her Tuba City "relocation"
home, September 2000, just after one of our hay runs. Faye Tso
also raised fine churro sheep, and her family is continuing the
traditions of potterymaking, healing, and sheepraising they learned
from her.
Traditional Dine' pottery being fired. (photo courtesy Faye Tso)
MBMP-129. Faye
Tso, Pot with 2 Yei figures and water wave in relief, 8.25 in.
high. SOLD.
MBMP-131. Faye
Tso. Pot with raised water wave motif, 6.75 in. high. SOLD.