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| Jewelry |
Indigenous Brilliance
Marisa Bartolucci
05/02/2005
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By the 20th century, the Pueblo peoples had also begun exploring new jewelry-making techniques, often with encouragement from traders who wanted souvenirs to sell to tourists. The Zuni, long known for their beautifully carved stone fetishes, became expert in intricate lapidary as well as silversmithing; the Hopis focused on silver overlay; the Santo Domingo expanded on their ancient techniques for making the tiny necklace beads from shells and turquoise known as heishi (their word for “shell”).
 | | A NAVAJO sterling silver and turquoise squash blossom necklace (above) auctioned at Christie’s for $15,535 in 2003.
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Native Americans had always used their jewelry as much for trading as adornment. “It’s wampum,” says Joe Tanner, a fourth-generation arts trader in Gallup, N.M. To guarantee a debt, the Navajo pawned their best jewelry at the trading post, then retrieved it after the harvest or sheep shearing. Jewelry from the turn of the century to the 1960s is still referred to as “Old Pawn.” The pawn tradition remains vibrant. “In the banking system here
in Gallup, $25 million has been lent against pawned jewelry,” Tanner says.
Outside the Southwest, few Anglos recognized the jewelry’s artistry. “Thirty years ago, nobody wanted this stuff. You couldn’t give it away,” says Rolando Reyes, owner of Common Ground, a gallery for Native art and artifacts in New York. Grossman attests to how much the market has changed. She bought her first serious piece of Southwest Native American jewelry, an especially fine squash blossom necklace, in the 1950s for a mere $250. She now estimates it is worth about $5,000.
Watershed Year
Tanner credits the 1975 Sotheby Parke Bernet auction of New Mexico trader C.G. Wallace’s private collection of Southwest jewelry as a market benchmark. Following that event, fashionistas were spotted wearing concha belts and large silver and turquoise bracelets. Interest in the jewelry spread internationally. Today the Germans and the Japanese are among its most avid collectors.
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