Edaakie, Tim

Tim Edaakie was a jeweler and potter from Zuni Pueblo. He was born in 1974 and was raised in a jewelry making family. He won several awards for his jewelry at the Museum of Northern Arizona’s Annual Zuni Show in the late 1990s. Then in 2001, Bobby Silas moved to Zuni Pueblo to be nearer family in New Mexico. That’s how they first met.

Tim was interested in reviving ancient Zuni styles and designs but he didn’t know much about how to make pottery. Bobby could make pottery but he couldn’t paint Zuni designs. So they decided to collaborate. After a couple years of Bobby learning to work with Zuni clay and Tim learning the whole process, most of the work was shared equally. However, Tim always did most of the painting and Bobby always did most of the firing.

Tim once told us they’d found a book about Zuni pottery written by a pair of anthropologists who had actually listened to what the Zuni women were saying about how they sorted out the designs on their pottery. That’s when Tim and Bobby realized the designs were prayers for rain, fertility and good crops. It was a language in itself, a language hardly understood any more. For them it added more spiritual depth to what they were doing.

Bobby and Tim won multiple ribbons for their pottery over the years at venues like the Santa Fe Indian Market, the Heard Museum Indian Arts Fair and Market and the Museum of Northern Arizona’s Hopi Show. Then in 2020 Tim died.