A Mud Toy by Navajo artist Elsie Benally, featuring a Navajo cowboy in a yellow “velvet” shirt with a painted turquoise necklace with joklas, riding bareback upon a large green tortoise, 1980s, - 1990s, clay, paint, and wool, 3 ¾ x 4 ½ × 3 ⅜ inches.
Mud Toys, sunbaked (not kiln-fired) clay figures decorated with paint, fabric scraps and wool are an art form revived in the 1980s in Farmington New Mexico, on the edge of the Navajo Reservation. Elsie’s figures often depict animals wrapped in homespun wool with sweet whimsical faces, horses, circus animals, and other whimsical creatures ridden by Navajo folks decked out their fine traditional clothing, and sometimes riding double with children or small animals.
A Mud Toy by Navajo artist Elsie Benally, featuring a Navajo cowboy in a yellow “velvet” shirt with a painted turquoise necklace with joklas, riding bareback upon a large green tortoise, 1980s, - 1990s, clay, paint, and wool, 3 ¾ x 4 ½ × 3 ⅜ inches.
Mud Toys, sunbaked (not kiln-fired) clay figures decorated with paint, fabric scraps and wool are an art form revived in the 1980s in Farmington New Mexico, on the edge of the Navajo Reservation. Elsie’s figures often depict animals wrapped in homespun wool with sweet whimsical faces, horses, circus animals, and other whimsical creatures ridden by Navajo folks decked out their fine traditional clothing, and sometimes riding double with children or small animals.
