Ida Sahmie (born Nobell 1960) is a Navajo potter. Sahmie combines Hopi traditional pottery making methods and Navajo iconography in her work. She has work in the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.

Biography

Sahmie is Navajo and was born in 1960 outside of Pine Springs, Arizona. She married a Hopi man, Andrew "Louie" Sahmie, and moved to the Hopi reservation. She learned pottery making from her mother in law, Priscilla Namingha. Sahmie began to sell her pottery in the 1980s.

Ida Sahmie

Work

The shape of the pottery that Sahmie makes is based on Hopi traditions and incorporates traditional Navajo designs and iconography, such as Yei designs. Sahmie prefers to use clay mined from the Navajo reservation and uses white and yellow clay in the body of the pots. Black slip is created by adding wild spinach to the mixture. Pots are fired outdoors using traditional methods.

Ida Sahmie

Sahmie has work in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.

Ida Sahmie

References

Living people

1960 births

Navajo artists

Native American women artists

Native American potters

Indigenous women of the Americas

Women potters

American potters

20th-century American ceramists

20th-century American women artists

American women ceramists

21st-century American ceramists

20th-century Native American artists

21st-century Native American artists

20th-century Native American women

21st-century Native American women