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This extremely beautiful and particularly well-made piece will make your day every single day you look at it. The shape, size, color and overall beauty and harmony of the artistic composition here is quite remarkable as equally is the bracelet’s superior craftsmanship, comfort and wearability. This one could very easily become your “go-to” old Navajo bracelet and we guarantee that there will be no shortage of people trying to purchase this goodie from you particularly if you should walk down the street anywhere in the American Southwest or Inter-Mountain west from Santa Fe to Scottsdale to Aspen to Telluride to Tucumcari.
The bracelet’s silver shank is composed of three strands of hand-pulled silver wire; two smooth outer strands and the center strand twisted for a nice visual contrast and tension. Atop the shank is mounted the central silver platform upon which is mounted the row of five lovely, large matched turquoise stones which are the exciting focal point and visual centerpiece of the bracelet.
And now let’s talk a bit about these five gorgeous perfectly-matched large high-domed greenish-blue turquoise Beauty Queens with their fine light brown matrix, where oh where and from which fine American turquoise mine might these beautiful babies be from? There are several major candidates to consider here, among them Royston, Nevada, King’s Manassa, Colorado, Cerrillos, New Mexico. You decide, but whichever mine they are from they are simply stupendous in our view. the stones are all perfectly set in a row in old-style “foldover” type silver bezels. Please notice that the two outer turquoise stones in the row of five are more round-ish in shape than the center three stones which are more oval in shape, this is a beautifully unexpected artistic touch which provides a very nice visual accent and contrast. There is an old kind of slang term in the Indian art business which refers to turquoise stones which have a particular intensity of color and form and a great visual impact. That term is “Zat” and it applies most perfectly here. “Zat” is in the house here!
An exceptionally fine historic Navajo
silver “row” style bracelet with five large turquoise stones c. 1930’s-40’s
The bracelet measures 1” in width at its widest center point and tapers down to slightly over 1/4” in width at the silver capped terminals ends. The inner circumference end-to-end is 5 3/4” and the gap between the terminals is 15/16” just slightly under 1” for a total interior circumference of just under 6 3/4”. The bracelet weighs a very comfortable and extremely wearable 55 grams or 1 7/8 ounces. The bracelet is in excellent original vintage condition with some degree of age appropriate wear and particularly so for its 80 to 90 years of age. The center turquoise stone and one of the end stones are very slightly cracked across the middle, but they are completely stable and secure in their settings. We have resisted the urge to polish the silver on this bracelet because it has a lovely aged patina and a considerable amount of original dark tarnish. We will leave that decision up to the fortunate next owner, but we personally think that the bracelet would look even more striking and beautiful if it were a bit polished.
This is the sort of completely beautiful, wearable and affordable piece that people used to actually get into fistfights
in the aisles over at Antique American Indian art shows in Santa Fe. (“I saw it first, no you didn’t, I did.”) This doesn’t occur so much anymore because pieces as good as this one are now that much more scarce in the marketplace than they have ever been before. There simply aren’t that many pieces of this exalted quality and beauty to go around and those few who are lucky enough to already have them are usually unwilling to part with them. Fortunately, after 35-plus years of doing this we have more than one of these “Golden Oldies” ourselves, so we can let this terrific one go without having a nervous breakdown from total turquoise bracelet withdrawal syndrome.
Price $2,250
“It sure feel good when you wear hand-made jewelry."
-Renowned Navajo silversmith and teacher, Ambrose Roanhorse, 1936 Quotation from Billie Hougart,
“The Little Book of Marks on Southwestern Silver”, TBR International, 2011
