Each Pot Tells a Story
Judi and Cindy Henhawk, 2022. Video still, ArTeach Video Series. COURTESY OF Glenhyrst Art Gallery.
Six Nations Pottery and the legacy work of Santhony Pottery
In September 2021, I pulled into the driveway of Cindy and Anthony Henhawk’s home on Six Nations of the Grand River, Ont. Pleased to see each other, we gathered together in the Henhawks’ backyard to film an educational video about Santhony Pottery and the history of Six Nations pottery. The film was for Glenhyrst Art Gallery, where I serve as curator and head of collections. I was introduced to Cindy’s sister-in-law, Judi Henhawk Sault, who offered us some ripe cherry tomatoes from the vine. Following the lifting of pandemic measures, it felt good to be in the company of other people again.
When the camera started to roll, the sisters described how they travel the powwow circuit selling their work like “Thelma and Louise.”
Elda M. Smith, Vase, Early 1970’s. Clay gathered from the land. Private Collection. Early 1970’s, Steve Smith’s mother.
During the 1950s and ’60s, Elda “Bun” Smith, a resident of Six Nations, walked the land surrounding her home and discovered old pottery sherds in the earth. It soon became apparent to her that Haudenosaunee pottery once thrived on Six Nations. She became curious, asking, “Where did it go?” In 1962, Elda received a grant from the Ontario Arts Council that enabled ceramic artist Tessa Kiddick to deliver fine art pottery workshops to Elda and 10 other women on Six Nations.
The result was something of a synchronous revelation.
Using pottery sherds as primary source material, Elda conducted research into customary Haudenosaunee design elements, techniques and iconography, while engaging resources and support from Kiddick, to help revitalise an entire artistic practice. What Elda accomplished was nothing short of momentous and yet, unfortunately, remains little known outside of Southern Ontario.
Santhony Pottery, Medicine Keeper, 2012. Terra cotta earthenware, 7.6 x 7.6 x 7.6 cm. COURTESY OF Santhony Pottery.
To keep medicines stored in a cool and dark vessel.
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The story of Santhony Pottery, and Six Nations pottery more generally, reads like an extended family tree of sorts. It is a veritable network of critical analysis, generational knowledge and novel techniques, shared amongst family, friends and community, that culminated in one of Canada’s strongest examples of cultural renewal. It should come as no surprise, then, that the Mohawk clan system is also crucial to understanding the close relationship between clay and familial bonds.
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To a large extent, their body of work maintains the geometric design patterns found in historical Haudenosaunee pottery alongside contemporary representations of clan symbols, wampum belts, animal totems and ceremonial liturgies. It is partly for this reason that curators such as Jami C. Powell propose that the materiality of clay has systems of “knowledge embedded within it.” This and other subject matter often function as narrative devices that pose absorbing moral quandaries and educational teachings.
Santhony Pottery, Mother Earth Bowl (detail), 2019. Terra cotta earthenware, 15 x 15 x 5 cm. COURTESY OF Santhony Pottery.
Importance of teachings, fire at centre, teepees in a circle to represent community, and the sun to show the directions (East, West, North and South).
“When I start throwing,” Cindy says, “it sometimes becomes what it wants to be.”
In this way, what was conceived as a bowl transforms into a box, or what was imagined as a vase becomes a seed pot. Likewise, Cindy and Judi have also mapped the spiritual dimensions of clay by explaining how it invariably contains energy from Mother Earth that can be sensed with the hands. In this light, then, their hands channel Her will.
Curator Joe Horse Capture argues that “telling a story is a powerful method of transferring knowledge and experience… the practice is vital to preservation and continuance.”
This article is an excerpt and and is available in full in the Fall/Winter 2023-2024 issue of Studio Magazine.
