Our new book is now available!
Southwestern Indian Rings
by Paula A. Baxter
Photography by Barry Katzen
Visit Amazon for its discounted price
With a fascinating variety of American Indian rings from the southwestern United States shown in more than 350 color photos, Southwestern Indian Rings
provides a design history of these rings, beginning with pre-contact artifacts and continuing through to contemporary artistic innovations.
The text surveys key developments in Native American ring design; materials and methods of construction; definitions for historical and vintage rings; master innovators; and the transition from craft to wearable art since 1980.
Shortly after the Civil War, Native American artisans began making silver rings set with turquoise, coral, jet, mother-of-pearl, and colored shell, adding lapis, malachite, onyx, and petrified wood over the decades. More recently, artisans began utilizing gold and such non-traditional settings as opals and diamonds, among others.
Works by Navajo and Pueblo artists are featured, although Apache, Northern Cheyenne, and Sonoran Desert Native jewelers are also included. A guide to valuation issues and resources is offered for collectors.
978-0-7643-3875-5
hardcover $34.99 (but Amazon is giving a discount)
8 1/2 x 11
160 pages
361 color photos
For the third time, we tried to visit Toadlena Trading Post and failed. We attempted two times back in the mid-to-late 1990s when we were doing our roving trading post visits. We found Two Grey Hills on the dirt road, but no luck when it came time to sight Toadlena. On our recent visit last month, we were traveling on Route 491 (former Rte. 666) from Gallup to Shiprock and back. We knew the turnoff was around Newcomb, we had our maps out, and there were some signs not far out of both Gallup and Shiprock. Yet we failed again.
The culprit, we realized, was the fact that New Mexico DOT is working on Route 491 in that area, doing bypass construction and road widening. Subsequently, the turnoff from 491 wasn’t indicated. We’ve been pretty excited about the work that Mark Winter and staff have been doing to make this 1890s trading post come alive again with weaving talent and the chance for the visitor to have an artful museum experience. Nevertheless, a well-placed sign at the turnoff would help everyone. Maybe the construction workers moved it. We’ll try to find this elusive trading post yet again on a later trip. In the meantime, if you plan to visit — get your GPS going!
(Banner from the trading post's website)
We recently received a report from a usually reliable source about a practice that happens at the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial, held in Gallup at Red Rock State Park. This event most often takes place the week and weekend before the SWAIA Indian Market in Santa Fe. The Inter-Tribal has had a rough patch related to funding, but is still considered one of the important shows in the summertime calendar of Indian arts. Native artists submit their work for judging and display, and the judges tend to be experienced Indian traders and regional experts.
It turns out that artists pay a holding fee to keep the judged art on display through the length of the Ceremonial; this fee also causes some of them to place an extraordinarily high price on a prize-winning piece in the hopes of not selling it at Ceremonial, since it can get a higher price as a result at the Indian Market or elsewhere. An award from the Ceremonial judges is a known boost in value for such a work.
The small-sized items produced for sale at Fred Harvey Company hotels, restaurants, and tourist outlets — like Desert View on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon — are amazingly popular and have kept their collectible nature. Prices were quite low, especially for manufactured goods, until this past decade. Collectors examining Fred Harvey objects such as jewelry are experiencing sticker shock these days. As more and more individuals have taken notice of a unique form of Americana, those small bracelets with stamps of horses and whirling logs or strands of turquoise shaped by Santo Domingo Indians, have seen a 20-35% increase in sale price.
There’s a place in the Southwest that allows a whole new view of Apache art. For those touring southeastern New Mexico, a stop at the Inn of the Mountain Gods Resort and Casino in Mescalero, New Mexico, provides a feast for the eyes. This resort, renovated and reopened in 2005, contains original works of art by Apache artists along the inn’s eight-story walls. Apache design is the theme, including the larger-than-life bronze statues of crown dancers by Fredrick Peso. Two major artists of Apache heritage, Allan Houser and Larry Vasquez, remind us that there are more perspectives out there than the familiar Navajo and Pueblo and their aesthetics.
Statues by Fredrick Peso at the Inn of the Mountain Gods (photo from the Resort's website).
For those traveling in Indian Country this summer, investigations of Indian arts will often uncover objects made for humorous purposes. Native peoples, including those of the Southwest, have long honed an ironic stance toward life. When the Institute of American Indian Arts opened in 1962 in Santa Fe, its most notable young painters expressed their rage, anger, and irony in marvelous compositions. Artists like T.C. Cannon and Fritz Scholder painted young Natives with the American flag draped around their shoulders like a poncho. They depicted Indians at bars wearing bleak faces and quietly roasted the oblivious white patrons who boosted Indian artistic fortunes. Indian “folk art” performs the same role by showing that traditional Indians are more conversant with modern desires than many tourists realize. Just go to any McDonald’s in Four Corners Country and you’ll see this at once.
"Navajo Couple" by Harrison Juan (1998).
This prime example from a museum in the Northeast shows us a fine Navajo-made squash blossom necklace using American currency (silver dollars) for ornamentation. The earlier generations of Native smiths used U.S. and Mexican coins for their metal until this practice was firmly banned by the federal govenment in mid-century. Beautiful necklaces were crafted between the 1920s and 1950s and became enjoyable souvenirs to be brought back home and worn for their amusement value. Yet these pieces are also fine examples of Native exploration with design. Humor has to be an underlying impulse: Indians would grow to understand that such currency was essential for living in the modern world.
Squashblossom necklace on display at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.
At this point, a collector finds that he or she is ready to entertain the idea of people — the object’s creators. It can be embarrassing to admit that one collects for a period of time without thinking about the creators, but many collectors admit that this is precisely what they have done. Many times, collectors begin to forge bonds with their suppliers. These dealers, vendors, and shop owners often suggest artists to meet, and then collectors start on the show circuit.
One of the most popular artist's booth at Santa Fe Indian Market.
I still remember a crucial moment, about four years into my collecting, when a Navajo gallery dealer quietly advised me to take a good look at the people who made objects I wanted to purchase. I followed through at the Gallup Intertribal Ceremonial, and I learned that those objects I loved so much had people behind them.
Well, now the collector is amassing objects, and has begun to sort out some personal feelings about what is wanted and needed for a collection. The educational process begins around this point. I discovered that if I was going to spend my money like a drunken sailor, I did want to know more about the materials my object of desire was made with. For me, this meant learning about silver — coin silver, German silver, sterling silver, silver with alloys. Oh, and then, there’s the turquoise…
Books are an important resource for collectors.
Books are needed! Once the collector becomes truly primed, the need to learn, evaluate, and judge based on knowledge becomes a driving force. In my case, it led me to begin writing on the subject when the variety of books out there wasn’t enough to satisfy my questions. Today, Amazon and the online used book market make the hunt for education an easier process than it was back in the 1980s.
One object isn’t enough, oh no! The new collector is ready to embark willy-nilly on a hunt for objects like the ones in his/her possession. Frankly, new collectors can’t get enough exposure to these objects. If you don’t live in the Southwest, you comb through local shops, dealers, and shows. It only took one trip for me to realize that big successful enterprises like the Brimfield (MA) antique shows are NOT the place to find one’s objects of desire. A savvy dealer has been there the day before and taken anything of note. New collectors need to understand these realities before expending too much manic energy in fruitless hunts.
Sometimes hunts prove beneficial after the fact. We started visiting trading posts on the Navajo reservation in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Some had already stopped being genuine sources for Indian arts. Yet we discovered an affordable and fantastic rug at the Crystal Trading Post and a saddle blanket at Shonto, and learned about the historical importance of trading posts, even though their day had passed by the mid-1970s. New posts, operating like galleries are less plentiful, but when you hunt down one like Twin Rocks Trading in Bluff, Utah, it’s like hitting a bulls-eye!
Twin Rocks Trading Post, Bluff, UT