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A magnificent and very dramatic Hopi silver

“height”-style ring inlaid with various woods and stones by Charles Loloma, c.1970’s

This is flat-out one of the finest pieces of Southwestern art of any kind or from any time period that we have ever seen; an extraordinary masterpiece of inspiration, imagination and incredible skill. When Charles Loloma is discussed as being the Native American artist who completely changed forever the idea of what “Indian” art was and could be, this is precisely what we are talking about.

This incredible ring is both a dramatic modern sculpture and a unique and striking piece of wearable jewelry at the same time. It is amazingly daring and wonderfully organic and “soulful" with materials, colors and textures deeply evocative of the harshly beautiful desert landscape of Loloma’s remote Hopi mesa homeland.  The inlay is composed primarily of a large and lovely piece of fossilized mastodon ivory and an equally sizable piece of beautiful deepest-brown Southwestern desert ironwood placed next to each other and accented with smaller pieces of turquoise, lapis lazuli, more ironwood and red coral.

Charles Loloma wearing a very similar ring c. 1975.

Photo © by Guy and Doris Monthan, “Art and Indian Individualists”, Northland Press, Flagstaff, AZ, 1975.

The ring measures precisely a size 8 on a professional graduated ring sizer. The stone inlay panel measures

1 1/2" across the face of the ring and 1" in height. The inlay rises 3/8 to 1/2 inch above the finger and the ring weighs a substantial yet extremely comfortable 34 grams or 1 1/4 ounces. The ring is in excellent original condition and it is signed “Loloma” on the interior in Loloma’s customary and beautifully hand-engraved signature. According to the previous owner's family records, the ring was purchased directly from Charles Loloma at his studio in Hotevilla Village on the Hopi Third Mesa sometime in the late 1970's.

In our view, this spectacular ring is one of the greatest of all of Charles Loloma's extraordinary jewelry creations and thus worthy of an honored place in any collection anywhere in the world. This is the very essence of true artistic greatness.

SOLD