The Enduring Quality Of The Indian Classics

The evolution of the Indian jewelry industry has been one of the most amazing phenomenons in the history of art and commerce. The making of jewelry is not unique to the cultures of this hemisphere. Archaeological evidence proves that prehistoric peoples, the world over, made, wore, traded and appreciated personal adornments in art forms native to their cul-tures. Our principal interest in the story of native Southwest American Indian jewelry is with that of the past half century and mainly with the last twenty of those fifty years.

From the early 1920's through the mid 1950's, Southwestern Indian silversmithing attained a degree of artistic excellence which rivaled that of distinguished silversmiths throughout history. The C. G. Wallace collection of Southwestern Indian jewelry and artifacts is convincing evidence of the quality representative of Navajo and Zuni genius. We have deliberately reproduced selections as near actual size as space limitations will allow - so that our readers may experience an "eyeball to eyeball" sensuous confrontation with the truly great classics by the great Indian masters.

Regardless of when the Navajo and the Zuni learned silversmithing, who taught them, and what they learned from each other - the past fifty years represent the golden age of their art. Three factors were acutely responsible - the influence of the Anglo traders and their dedication to progress and profit, which motivated in the Indian an awakened sense of pride in professionalism; Navajo competed with Navajo for the traders' goods and patronage, Zuni competed with Zuni; while traders competed with each other for the growing market to satisfy a discerning clientele. The real traders used Navajos for silver-smithing, Zunis for lapidary expertise and Santo Domingos for heshi spacers. Theirs was an unincorporated guild system which produced many of the masterpieces shown in our Classic Editions and is the system basically used by many modern traders who supply silver, gold, turquoise and materials under limited contract arrangements. Three traders may acquire three strands each of fetish birds from carvers of comparable quality.

One year later one trader's necklace will have won many more awards and commanded greater price than the other two. The difference would be the quality of the heshi used, and the talent of the stringer who in the final process determines the composition of colors, spacing and that indiscernible something which makes the dollars and cents difference.

Elsewhere in our text we note: "What you see here is a lot of Soul." That more-or-less applies to all the Indian jewelry shown in this book. In a market loaded with treated turquoise, machine made beads, squash blossom findings, and multi-unit centrifugal castings, we have aimed at original pieces.

The contemporary masters have the benefits of electric tools and devices which their predecessors could not afford.