Hopi Butterfly Dance Tablita Polychrome Painted Wood, Stepped Cloud Terraces

Native American, Hopi. A Hopi tableta, or dance headdress, made from three flat wooden boards tied together with fiber cord and hide thongs, with a leather harness to hold it on the wearer's head. Each board rises to a stepped, terraced top, a skyline that echoes the cloud forms found throughout Pueblo art. The panels carry a chalky ivory ground painted in red, sky blue, pale green, black, and white: red domes rimmed with white dashes, bands of color, and quartered circles on the two legs that frame a rounded opening for the head. At the center a round projecting element under a flat brim shows rows of dotted half-circles, probably clouds, over red and blue panels with hooked black forms. It was likely worn in a social dance, so it was meant to be seen in motion against the summer sky. Among the Hopi of northeastern Arizona, the tableta is a flat headdress worn upright. It is best known from the Butterfly Dance (Polik'tikive), a social dance held in late summer. In that dance young women wear tabletas, often stepped and painted with cloud, rain, and flower imagery, alongside male partners. Taller and more elaborate tabletas also belong to certain katsina figures, most famously the Hemis katsina at the Niman ceremony. In both settings the stepped outline is usually read as a stack of cumulus clouds, and the painting asks for rain and fertile fields. The palette here is typical of early twentieth-century Hopi painted wood. A white clay or kaolin-like ground sits under flat fields of color, and the outlines are done in black. The quartered circle, split into colored segments, is a common Pueblo device and is often linked to the cardinal directions. The dotted half-circles on the central element fit a familiar shorthand for rain-bearing clouds. Construction from separate boards tied with cord and hide, rather than one carved panel, is common on tabletas: it saves scarce wood and gives the piece some flex when the dancer moves. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 206374

Estimation:381,23€

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