Kalestewa, Quanita and Jack

“When we took her [Nellie Bica] into our household, we started adding everything we could think of in the bowls.” – Quanita talking about making cornmeal bowls with her husband, Jack, after her mother moved in with them

Jack Kalestewa said he learned how to make pottery from his great-grandmother. She taught him everything she knew, including where to get their clay and how to do ground-firing. To this day, her descendants still prefer to ground-fire their pottery.

The daughter of Nellie Bica, Quanita also learned how to make pottery as she was growing up. However, when they were married, Jack and Quanita first tried their hand at making jewelry. Then when the price of silver shot up in the 1960s, they reevaluated what they were doing and decided to pivot to making pottery. Making pottery was healthier, too, in that they weren’t breathing in the dust from grinding seashells.

By the late 1960s, making pottery and herding sheep were their primary sources of income. That worked out well as they always had plenty of sheep manure to fire their pottery, whether they were at their sheep camp near the abandoned pueblo of Pinnawa (meaning: “windy place”) or at their home on the west side of Zuni Pueblo.

Jack is credited with making Hawikuh Revival and traditional polychrome jars, corn meal bowls with frog effigies, coffee cups, frog pots, owls and figures of bears with heart-lines. Quanita is credited with making very similar pottery but she didn’t study the ancient Hawikuh shapes and designs like Jack did, nor did she try to recreate them like he did. Jack and Quanita both collaborated and worked alone for many years, teaching their children, Erma Homer, Connie Yatsayte and Roweena Lemention, to make pottery, too.

For both Jack and Quanita, their favorite designs included frogs, butterflies, tadpoles, deer-in-his-house, terraced clouds, Kolowisi (the plumed Zuni water serpent) and lizards.

Between them, they earned numerous awards at Santa Fe Indian Market in the 1990s.