Since the opening in April 2016 of the excellent Heard Museum exhibit Over the Edge: Fred Harvey at the Grand Canyon and in the Great Southwest, curated by Kathleen Howard and Diana Pardue…
We have been thinking again about the Hopi tiles sold by the Fred Harvey Company in the early twentieth century.
The Fred Harvey Company established the Indian Department in 1902, headquartered in the Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque, as a museum and showroom, with the intent of promoting and selling Indian handmade goods in its chain of lodges, shops, and restaurants at locations throughout the West.
The Indian Department also wholesaled Indian-made crafts to dealers and curio shops in the east. By the first decade of the twentieth century the Fred Harvey Company had become the largest distributor of high-quality Indian arts in the United States.
From the 1900s to the 1930s the Harvey Company was also the biggest outlet for Hopi tiles. In a 1963 Plateau article titled “The Fred Harvey Collection 1899-1963”, Byron Harvey III, great-grandson of founder Fred Harvey, referred to the Harvey Company’s inventory when he wrote, “C.L. Owen obtained Hopi pottery from his residence in Toreva in 1913 and included tiles and flower pots. A letter, written in 1921, estimated that the company still had over 2,700 of these Hopi tiles.”
The tiles sold through the Harvey Company came in only three shapes: square, rectangle and hexagon. They exhibit signs of being nearly mass-produced, many showing hurried manufacture resulting in poor quality, and they were marketed primarily to tourists. Thousands of tiles were made between 1895 and 1930, and nearly every institution with an inventory of Hopi pottery—such as the Heard Museum, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Denver Art Museum and the Brooklyn Museum—has one or more tiles with the ubiquitous Harvey Company sticker, FROM THE HOPI VILLAGES, attached to the back.
Though the Harvey Company sold the majority of these tiles (hence they are commonly termed “Fred Harvey tiles”), it is important to note that the company was not permitted to purchase directly from the Hopi until 1910, when Herman Schweizer, head of the Indian Department, was given permission by the government superintendent of the reservation. Until that time Harvey Company had obtained all Hopi crafts through reservation traders, especially Thomas Keam, although these traders did not sell solely to Fred Harvey.
The most common of these tiles are square in shape with the painted design of kachina masks. These tiles were made continuously for about thirty years, and vary minimally in size-typically 3-3/8” inches in height and width-this uniformity may indicate that molds were used in their production.
The painted designs were formulaic: most often two thin lines outline a single kachina mask. Perhaps ninety percent of Harvey tiles are decorated with kachina masks, as kachinas lent an exotic air while portraying tradition and authenticity to potential buyers, who were mostly tourists from the east unfamiliar with Indian pottery.
Most of the kachina masks are unidentifiable and fall into a category of fanciful depictions that are either conglomerations of various kachinas or otherwise altered masks. When actual masks are portrayed they are most often of Palhik Mana (Butterfly Maiden), Wakas (cow), Kipok (warrior), Koshare (Hano clown) or Qoqoqle (often referred to as the “Santa Claus” kachina). The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe has eighteen of these tiles in their collection, nine of which were originally shipped by trader Charles L. Owen from Toreva, Arizona to the Fred Harvey Company in 1913.
Hopi tiles were very popular, reaching their heyday in the first years of the twentieth century and peaking in the 1920s.
The Harvey Label
Byron Harvey III also discussed the “Fred Harvey label,” used by the Harvey Company in his 1963 article for Plateau. He reported that it was still in use at that time, and that the labels were intended as price stickers, as well as identifiers of origin, and cost codes were also recorded on them. The original label was rectangular with clipped edges, had a black border and measured approximately one inch by three-quarters of an inch in size.
The typeface changed, presumably in the 1920s, to a sleeker Art Deco style, and a white outer border was added at the same time.
The most common label used was FROM THE HOPI VILLAGES, and it appeared on most Hopi pottery plus some kachina dolls sold through company stores. There were labels for other tribal affiliations-for example, “From the Pueblo of Santa Clara”. The stickers were used primarily from the 1900s to the 1930s and are less commonly seen on articles dating from the 1940s to the 1960s, perhaps reflecting the diminishing quantity of Indian crafts sold through the company after the 1930s.
The foregoing was derived from our book Hopi & Pueblo Tiles: An Illustrated History.
Originally published May 29, 2016 on our Goodreads.com blog.
1962 – This is a Hopi Kachina, with Evelyn Roat. Flagstaff: Museum of Northern Arizona.
1973 – Kachinas: A Hopi Artist’s Documentary, illustrated by Cliff Bahnimptewa. Flagstaff: Northland Press, and Phoenix: Heard Museum.
1974 – Nampeyo, Hopi Potter: Her Artistry and Her Legacy, exhibition catalog. Fullerton: Muckenthaler Cultural Center.
1975 – Kachinas: The Barry Goldwater Collection at the Heard Museum, with Barry Goldwater and photographs by Jerry Jacka. Phoenix: W. A. Krueger Company and Heard Museum.
1975 – 
1976 – 
1977 – 
1979 – 
1982 – 
1986 – 
1986 – 
1988 – Patterns and Sources of Zuni Kachinas, with Bill Harmsen and Clara Lee Tanner, illustrated by Reese Koontz. Denver: The Harmsen Publishing Company.
1988 – 
1989 – 
1991 – 
1994 – Kachina: poupees rituelles des Indiens Hopi et Zuni, exhibition catalog, 30 juin-2 octobre 1994, with Marie-Elizabeth Laniel-Le François, and others. Marseille: Musées de Marseille.
1994 – 
1994 – 
1997 – 
2000 – 
2003 – Esprit Kachina: Poupees, Mythes et Ceremonies Chez les Indiens Hope et Zuni. (Kachina Spirit: Dolls, Myths and Ceremonies of the Hopi and Zuni Indians). with Pierre Amrouche, Nathalie Rheims, Francine Ndiaye, Paris: Galerie Flak.
2006 – 
2007 – 
2008 – Catclaw Cave, Lower Colorado River, Arizona, edited by Alan Ferg. Tucson: Arizona Archaeological Society; The Arizona Archaeologist No 37.
2014 – 
1974 – 
1995 –