Nineteenth-century Navajo and Pueblo silver jewelry

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 1998 by Paula A. Baxter

7 Adair, The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths, p. 39.

8 See Allison Bird, Heart of the Dragonfly: The Historical Development of the Cross Necklaces of the Pueblo and Navajo Peoples (Avanyu Publishing, Albuquerque, 1991), p. 15.

9 Ibid., p. 21.

10 Matthews, "Navajo Silversmiths," pp. 178-179.

11 See Frank McNitt, The Indian Traders (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1962).

12 Bedinger, Indian Silver, p. 13.

13 Larry Frank and Millard J. Holbrook, Indian Silver Jewelry of the Southwest, 1868-1930 (Schiller Publishing, West Chester, Pennsylvania, 1990), p. 9. The illustrations in this book (pp. 9-24), drawn from key museum collections, offer an excellent visual survey of first-phase Indian jewelry.

14 One of the few catalogues of a museum collection of this jewelry also attempts to characterize its aesthetics: "The very limits of that [early] technology thoroughly infuse the forms developed, however, so early phase material represents a kind of archaic expression rather than a sophisticated reflection of over-ornamentation" (While Metal Universe: Navajo Silver from the Fred Harvey Collection, ed. E. W. Jernigan [Heard Museum, Phoenix, 1981], p. 12).

15 A. M. Stephen, "The Navajo," American Anthropologist, vol. 6 (October 1893), pp. 345-362.

16 See Catherine Chambliss, "Metal of the Moon," Arizona Highways, vol. 17 (December 1941), pp. 26-37.

PAULA A. BAXTER is the curator of the art and architecture department at the New York Public Library in New York City.