Zuñi Jewelry

ZUNI JEWELRY PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOSEF MUENCH

There was a time when writers would describe Zuñi jewelry in just a phrase or two and were satisfied that they had summed up its special qualities. Twenty years ago this was not hard to do, but today the bewildering variety of Zuñi pieces defies simple descriptions. The old phrases are partly right when they speak of the “delicacy” of Zuñi jewelry, since this word still fits small-stone jewelry with its exquisitely tiny settings and silver “drops” (small, spherical silver ornaments). Another favorite statement is that the Navajos prefer silverwork while the Zuñis think more in terms of stones. While this is true, it isn't fair to underrate the Zuñi skill in fashioning the decorative bits of silver that accompany the stones. Only in some inlay pieces is silver completely out of sight, and at other times it is not merely a background, but a foil and a complement to the stones. To get to know Zuñi jewelry better, it is helpful to think of its five major styles: large-stone, small-stone, inlay, channel, and nugget. There are only a few other minor variations. Although all five styles are charming, each has a definite feeling of its own, appealing to a variety of tastes. The flowering of this craft into separate branches follows the same order as the list above. Large-stone came first, closely resembling the old Navajo styles that were its parents. Small-stone followed when better tools and skills allowed the craftsmen to make ever daintier settings. Inlay appeared as a rebirth of a prehistoric technique, stimulated by an archaeologist's interest. Channel, of obscure origins, came in about 1940, its silver strips following the lines between the stones in inlay, or forming modern-looking, geometric patterns. The latest entry into this field is nugget, the brainchild of a creative Zuñi craftsman, begun about 1948. Very rarely are two Zuñi pieces identical, unless they are designed as a pair, for earrings, or as multiple units, for necklaces or belts. The buyer has the fun and opportunity of looking through endless variations until he finds the “original” that most personally suits him. Even the minor defects, so hard to eliminate in any handicraft, give each piece a personality all its own. In point of numbers, large-stone jewelry is not the most important Zuñi style, but it has the dignity of being the oldest. The very earliest Zuñi pieces are so similar to contemporary Navajo ones that experts cannot often distinguish between them. Early bracelets had large, crudely polished stones, and if drops were present, these were also fairly large. When Zuñi jewelry began to sell in earnest, and traders brought in better tools and more turquoise, the jewelers shifted toward small-stone work, liberally studding the silver with smaller stones. In the large-stone jewelry still with us, silver plays an important role dramatizing the large settings. You can find many large-stone brooches with lovely ornamental silver borders of stamped bands or wirework. In squashblossom necklaces of this type, the bordered stone is set over showy blossom-ends, either stamped or cast, some resembling the fleur-de-lis. Other large stones are found in earrings, rings, and pendant necklaces. Irregularly shaped large stones are an important feature of “nugget” jewelry, but here they are treated quite differently, as we shall see later on. If you like the look of large stones tastefully set off in silver, this is the Zuñi style of jewelry for you. Choose deep or clear-colored turquoises and, if there are many stones involved in one piece, see that they are well matched. The natural veining running through turquoise is often used as an extra esthetic bonus, not to be looked down upon. Very little turquoise, especially in larger pieces, is entirely free of this matrix veining. “Spider web” turquoise, which has a very delicate netting of black matrix, is very popular. Most turquoise sold today is of a light, clear color well over on the blue side. Green turquoise is seldom seen although it is attractive, and the deeper turquoise-blue shades are also rather rare. For the better, rarer stones, you can expect to pay more, but in any case, avoid whitish, flat-colored stones. Beware of “doctored turquoise” which is poor-colored stones treated to have a better color, which will often fade with use. The moral, of course, is that it pays to buy from a respected, well-established dealer. Small-stone jewelry is probably what most people think of when Zuñi jewelry is mentioned. Certainly it is among the most popular of all Southwestern jewelry, and what the Indians themselves prefer, Navajos and Zuñis alike. Most of the time the stones are arranged in rows and clusters.

Row jewelry is beautifully simple. The horizontal rows of color-matched round, square, diamond, or needlepoint (double-pointed oval) turquoises are always in the best of taste. The silver is used here in intermediate rows of drops, and the smaller the stones, the correspondingly smaller the drops.

Clusters, by contrast, have a freer, rococo effect. Early jewelry of this kind had only one or two concentric rows radiating from the center, but today three or four rings of stones are more likely. Differently shaped stones are usually found in each row, and sometimes one row is replaced by a silver panel, a refreshing contrast to the many blue stones. Between each row lies a slender circle of twisted wire and the outermost row is encircled by drops.

While bracelets are the most usual base for row and cluster work, these patterns and their silver accompaniments are found in rings, earrings, pins, and concho belts also. Curiously, clusters become more imaginative and complex in these other forms, some of them resembling snowflakes or flowers. A peacock pin may display a cluster tail.

Earrings and pendant necklaces show a variety of other small-stone patterns, some representing birds, butterflies, leafy sprigs, and even flowerpots. The earrings are especially feminine, sometimes tinkling with the dangles that delighted Zuñi women of twenty years or more ago. A beautiful variety of the squash-blossom necklace, a Zuñi classic, is lavishly studded with tiny stones, each blossom top a miniature cluster, and the naja echo-ing the circular rows.

The next style of Zuñi jewelry, inlay, is quite different from either small-stone or large-stone. Technically speaking, this is mosaic work since the pieces are laid on, not in their backing, but “inlay” is the term widely used. Instead of the tranquil combination of silver and turquoise, inlay relies on the sparkling interplay of bright colors, usually turquoise-blue, black, white, and red. These colors symbolize the cardinal directions in Zuñi mythology and are supplied by turquoise, jet, white shell, and oxblood coral or red abalone shell. Other shell colors are pink, iridescent grey, orange, and yellow. Admiring

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“ZUÑI JEWELRY” BY JOSEF MUENCH. All photographs were taken with a Linhof 4x5 camera, on Ektachrome. Some of the jewelry was photographed outdoors in shade, others outdoors in the sun. These fine examples of Zuñi jewelry were photographed through the courtesy of J. W. Kennedy and Larry Lee of the Gallup Indian Trading Company, Gallup, New Mexico. Other specimens are from the private collection of Art Greene, Cliff Dwellers Lodge. The photographer says: “Fortunate, indeed, is the photographer who is permitted to photograph so many fine pieces of Indian craftsmanship and I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the men mentioned above. Selection of subjects was made to show the versatility, variety and beauty to be found in Zuñi jewelry.”

an ancient mosaic, Dr. F. W. Hodge asked Teddy Weake to make a piece for him in the same technique. This occurred about 1935, and the attendant interest soon made inlay a commercial item. Inlay today is almost exclusively representational, forming colorful pictures. Popular subjects are the sun, rainbow, and knife-wing gods, the last often called "thunderbirds." Other inlays show butterflies, dragonflies, deer, and even cows and horses. The most beautiful inlays, however, are of ceremonial dancers or their masks. The inlay makers take great pains to make these realistic, using orange shell for faces and hands, green turquoise for leafy collars, and iridescent grey abalone shell for fur. The lines of small details such as fingers and feathers may be engraved to make the figures still more life-like. These dance figures, so exquisitely made, are found not so much in jewelry as in larger, costlier items such as bookends and ashtrays.

Even the most modest inlay piece is a tribute to careful workmanship. The hairline cracks where the pieces are fitted together are scarcely visible, and the over-all effect is like a painting. The big inlays are rather bold and require neutral-colored clothing to set them off well. Zuñis have a tendency to get carried away by their own skill into overelaborate pieces, and this is truest of inlay. Huge squash-blossom necklaces will be formed of twelve or more colorful sun gods. The total appearance is too complex and showy for most women, who would be eclipsed behind such a necklace. The smaller jewelry, however, is always wearable, and the earrings and pins are delightful in sets. If you have a flair for wearing larger pieces, the bracelets are a nice compromise between size and wearability. Geometric-patterned inlay is not too common. It can

be seen in belt sets, where the odd shapes force the jeweler to use something other than pictures, and in a few handsome necklaces. Such necklaces, usually in links, are far more wearable than the showy squash-blossom variety as described above.

The borderline between inlay and channel, the next jewelry style to appear, is not always clear. The same representational subjects are seen, different only in the silver lines wholly or partially replacing the cracks between the stones. This visible difference is due to a newer technique in which narrow silver strips are soldered down to form "channels" or cells into which the stones are later fitted. Just how this technique came into being among the Zuñis is unknown, but dealers agree it happened sometime about 1940.

Earrings, pins, rings, and other smaller jewelry echo representational inlay in all its variations. But in bracelets, channel shows its other face: modern-looking geometric designs, using simple triangles, rectangles, squares, or circles in all kinds of color combinations. The old favorite pair of silver and turquoise is handsome as ever in geometric channel, but silver is also joined with jet, coral, white shell, or pink shell in monocolored bracelets. Often two colors alternate in combinations such as light turquoise with pink shell, coral and turquoise, jet and turquoise, or white shell with turquoise or coral. Combinations of three or four colors are rarer, probably because it is harder to arrange them into a pleasing pattern. One very lovely bracelet uses mostly turquoise and jet, with smaller touches of coral. The four directional colors also occur here, in chevrons, rectangles, or other units. This geometric channel can be seen, to a lesser extent, in pins, earrings, rings, belts, or necklaces, but the patterns are not always as pleasant as in the long rectangular bands on bracelets.

One interesting variation uses highly stylized birds or arrows against contrasting backgrounds. The bird or “parrot” motif makes very attractive necklaces in combinations of jet and turquoise or coral and white shell, in graduated links.

Some channel even echoes small-stone jewelry. Checkerboard channel bracelets recall row bracelets except for the absence of housings and drops. There are channel cluster pins and earrings, slightly more angular than their small-stone counterparts, more sleekly modern and very good-looking. For the most part these smallstone-inspired pieces are all in turquoise and silver.

There is a large gap between the orderly channel style and the latest of Zuñi jewelry developments, the rococo nugget style. Dan Simplicio said he made the first nugget rings of rough-cut turquoises. These “nuggetcut” stones, while polished, retain their natural bumps and hollows. The effect is as handsome as it is novel, showing the stone off to its best advantage in a cut that is more economical of material than the smooth-topped cabochon. The nugget-like silver pieces flanking the turquoise complete the naturalistic look.

Bracelets and rings like this first nugget jewelry are available today, but nugget jewelry also has more complex variations. Still based on the idea of following the natural forms of the materials, coral twigs are incorporated into the design. With the twig as a focal point, the piece will have a number of nugget-cut turquoises in scalloped housings supplemented by fan-shaped prongs since the irregular shapes are harder to grip. Small stamped drops fill up any remaining spaces. Because each coral twig and accompanying turquoise is of a different shape, each composite design is a bit different. Since the stampings on prongs or drops is often of a radiating seashell motif, this exuberant style of designing suggests under-sea landscapes. On smaller pieces like rings and earrings, where only a small fragment of coral and few accompaniments can be used, this semblance is less noticeable.

Some of the larger coral and turquoise nugget pieces approach the flamboyance seen in some inlay necklaces, and require a certain courage on the part of the wearer. But, as always, small size is a great simplifier, and a single pendant or large pin in this style makes a rich-looking piece of jewelry.

There are imitations on the market that often closely duplicate their hand-crafted models, but the materials are often inferior. In imitation inlay, plastic materials replace the variety of shells, jet, and turquoise, but are betrayed by their even luster, despite the different colors. In any mass-produced item, even when the authentic materials are retained, the buyer misses the uniquely wide selection found in Indian jewelry.

What does this amazing variety of jewelry mean to the lover of things Southwestern? For a price far lower than jewelry of the ruby and sapphire class, it offers combinations of nature's choice materials in designs that satisfy virtually every taste. While turquoise and silver are fine accompaniments to the tanned skin and look of leather in our sunlit way of life, the appeal is by no means exclusively Southwestern. Zuñi jewelry can handsomely ornament any costume, however conservative or sophisticated. Even free-form enthusiasts are accommodated by the nugget style. An art form that has won many friends, Zuñi jewelry is bound to win many more. A jewelry rooted in the rich design heritage of the Zuñi Indians, it sends its appeal easily into non-Indian eyes and hearts.