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Three beautiful vintage Navajo silver and “Arizona Rainbow” petrified wood rings, c.1930’s-50’s
These three wonderful rings are the very embodiment of our beautiful colorful Southwestern desert landscape and of the early-to-mid 20th Century history of travel, tourism and Native Arts in our unique region. These are precisely the sorts of interesting and eye-catching pieces you would have excitedly purchased back in the 1930’s to 1950’s in a Southwestern Indian trading post as an appropriate and meaningful souvenir keepsake of your long summer drive out from Chicago to Los Angeles and back on the old Route 66 and your various interesting and memorable stops along the way or your luxuriously pampered ride on the Santa Fe Railway’s renowned “Super Chief” through the immense exotic expanses of the Southwest and your various visits to the famous Fred Harvey company hotels, restaurants and trading posts along the route. Along these routes whether you travelled by car or by train you would have passed directly by The Painted Desert and The Petrified Forest near the town of Holbrook, in eastern Arizona where these 225 million year-old stones were originally found.
The source. The Petrified Forest near Holbrook, Arizona
Photo source and © Arizona Highways Magazine
These three rings all prominently feature and were created around these magical ancient stones, like picture windows into all the extraordinary colors and hues of the Arizona desert; the rich red oranges, yellow ochres, purples, greys, blacks, greens. And unlike many so-called “tourist” era Southwestern Native jewelry pieces, these three pieces are all particularly well crafted pointing to them having been made by experienced traditional Navajo silversmiths and made at prominent Southwestern indian trading posts with very strict quality standards such as Julius Gans’ Southwest Arts in Santa Fe, Maisel’s in Albuquerque, Woodard’s or C.G. Wallace’s in Gallup,
J.L. Hubbell at Ganado, Vaughn’s in Phoenix or Verkamp’s at the South Rim of The Grand Canyon.
You can purchase any of these rings individually or any two of them or all three together as they look just wonderful together as you can see here. However you look at it, these pieces are all beautiful historic picturesque snapshots of our colorful classic Southwestern landscape and Native American art traditions that will give you a great deal of satisfaction over the years. We will describe each of the three individual rings in greater detail below:
Ring Number One
This beautiful, unique, hexagonally-shaped ring is the eye-catching “Big Daddy” of this group and it certainly is
quite large, measuring a size 12 on a professional graduated ring sizer. The ring’s face is 1” in height and just slightly under 1” in width and the ring weighs a comfortable but substantial 18 grams or 5/8 ounce. The striking, finely polished Arizona Rainbow petrified wood stone is set in an old-style “foldover” type silver bezel set atop
a split-chisel silver shank which is nicely decorated on either side of the stone with geometric stampworked designs.
The ring is in excellent original vintage condition.
Price $1,225
Ring Number Two
This lovely square-shaped ring is also fairly large in size, measuring a size 11 3/4 on a professional graduated
ring sizer. The ring’s face is 3/4” in height and 3/4” in width and the ring weighs a comfortable but substantial
17 grams or 5/8 ounce. The striking, highly polished Arizona Rainbow petrified wood stone in attractive hues of grey, purple, black and deep orange is finely flush set in what appears to be a cast silver shank which is nicely decorated on either side of the stone with geometric stampworked designs. The ring is in excellent original vintage condition.
Price $575
Ring Number Three
This beautiful smaller ring measures a size 7 to 7 1/4 on a professional graduated ring sizer. The ring’s face is
just slightly over 3/4” in height and is 3/4” in width and the ring weighs a very comfortable 10 grams or 3/8 ounce. The polished petrified wood stone is very nicely and gracefully domed upwards in profile and is interestingly set in
a horizontal orientation in an old-style “foldover” type silver bezel which is bordered on the top and bottom by a decorative row of small round applied-silver “raindrops”, ten on the top and ten on the bottom. The ring’s split-silver shank is undecorated and finely polished. The ring is in excellent original vintage condition. There appears to be a very slight fissure or natural crack in the surface of the stone, which does not look like damage from impact. The stone is completely secure in its setting.
Price $350
