Charles Loloma hallmark

About Charles Loloma

Charles Loloma was born in 1921 at Hotevilla on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona. He first worked in painting, participating in mural work in San Francisco in 1939. After military service during the Second World War, he studied ceramics at the School for American Craftsmen at Alfred University. His wife, Otellie, also worked in ceramics. The couple later made and sold pottery at Lloyd Kiva New’s craft center in Scottsdale.

Lolomaware used wheel-thrown forms and kiln-fired glazes, differing from the hand-built methods associated with much Hopi pottery. Loloma increasingly concentrated on jewelry from the mid-1950s. He combined silver or gold with turquoise, lapis lazuli, coral, wood and other materials. His experiments included tufa casting, sculptural arrangements of stones and inlay concealed on the inner surfaces of jewelry.

Loloma taught in Arizona and at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. He returned to Hopi in the mid-1960s and continued developing his jewelry practice. Apprentices included his niece Verma Nequatewa, who became known as Sonwai. His ceramics and jewelry entered museum collections, including the Museum of Arts and Design and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He died in Phoenix in 1991.