Jacob Koopee was the grandson of Marie Koopee; great-grandson of Nellie Douma Nampeyo (1896-1978); and great, great grandson of Nampeyo of Hano, all important ceramicists. He was born at Sichomovi, First Mesa and learned the craft from his aunt, Dextra Quotskuyva Nampeyo. Early in his career, in the mid-1990s, he made traditional Hopi-Tewa pottery with traditional Nampeyo family design patterns and signed his work “Jake Nampeyo.” As his career progressed, however, he created traditional vessel shapes but modernized the Sikyatki-revival designs, signing these pieces “Koopee.” Sikyatki is a former Hopi village on the eastern side of First Mesa that was inhabited by the Kokop clan of Hopi from the 14th to 17th centuries. It was first excavated in 1895 by the Smithsonian Institution. The designs on the pottery inspired Koopee’s great grandmother Nampeyo’s designs, which came to be known as Sikyatki revival.
