The 1970s Native American Jewelry Boom

Did you ever wonder why there are so many Native American jewelry items from the late 1960s and early 1970s?

Those were the times of peace and love, alternative dress, hippies, movie stars going wild and a big publicity boost for Native American jewelry from Arizona Highways magazine and other publications.

Although many celebrities began wearing Native American jewelry in the late 60s and early 70s, perhaps two of the most influential were Jim Morrison of the Doors and Cher.

Jim Morrison of The Doors

During the late 1960s when the Doors were at the height of their fame, Jim Morrison bought a concho belt from Wayne and Irma Bailey when they were traveling in California.  Joe H. Quintana (1915-1991), a Cochiti Pueblo master silversmith was the maker of this famous belt.  Quintana likely made the belt in 1966 or 1967 when he worked for Irma Bailey’s Indian Art & Pawn on the Old Town Plaza in Albuquerque.

Cher wearing a squash blossom necklace and other turquoise jewelry

The Sonny and Cher Show

Cher (Cherilyn Sarkisian of Armenian, Irish, German, English and Cherokee descent) has used Native American jewelry and accents throughout her career from 1965 and has had a dramatic influence on fashion. Her album Half Breed was release in 1973.

As a result of such publicity, everyone wanted some of the action !!

One of the most popular items made in the 1970s were squash blossom necklaces. There was a huge demand for them. It is also one of the most common vintage items offered to us today. The retail price of a squash blossom necklace during the early 1970s boom was the same or higher than the same item today. And often they were full size, heavy and ornate, something that doesn’t sell well today because a good number of people would rather wear than collect Native American jewelry.

During the boom some beautiful items were made. However, to cash in on the demand, some shops and silversmiths cranked out the items, sometimes with inferior workmanship and maybe the work wasn’t even done by Native American artists.

One thing that wasn’t skimped on was the sterling silver. Silver was only  $1.29 per ounce when Jim Morrison’s belt was made in 1966. Today silver is trading at $27.27 per ounce.  Read more about silver prices here. How Silver Price Affects the Value of Native American Jewelry

Back in the late 1960s there was ample US mined turquoise around to fill needs but as demand rose, Persian turquoise began to be imported from Iran.  In the 1970s a one carat U.S. turquoise stone would be considered expensive at $1. Today some of the more sought-after U.S. turquoise can cost up to $100 per carat.

Because of the great demand, the 1970s experienced the first BIG influx of imported copies and reproductions which gave some people the idea that Native American jewelry was chintzy and poorly made.

The boom crashed about the mid seventies when the fashion cycle started changing and the silver price started rising, hitting an artificially inflated high near $50 per ounce in the late seventies.

What mine is this turquoise from and what is the value of this squash blossom necklace?

Hello Paula,

All of the black matrix you see contains pyrite; some dark spots in the photo are exclusively pyrite. Most are mixed with the black matrix, however. Notice the quarter for size comparison. All the stones rise at least 1/8″ above their settings, and some rise as high as 1/4″ or higher. Amazing, right? The earrings appear to have hand engraved rising suns on them (the suns are not identical, causing me to think they were hand carved, however they may have been distorted during the shaping of the petals?). I love this necklace so much, as both my folks have passed. Knowing they wanted me to have it makes me feel very blessed.

I sent you the photo in natural undirected sunlight, but I also took a couple pics in direct sunlight around 8:00 this morning, before the skies became overcast (we’re expecting freezing rain here in northwest Ohio this evening. great). If you want me to send a photo of the piece in direct sunlight, I can. The pyrite shows up better in the sun.

Much to my delight, I rediscovered the Fred Harvey bracelet my parents gave me as a child, and set it next to the necklace for you to look at as well. I had a copper one also, but I hated it, and either traded it for a plastic animal with one of my childhood friends or threw it out altogether. Regrets!!!

If you venture a guess on the value of these pieces as you try to determine the mine this turquoise is from, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Sincerely,

Sydney

Good morning Sydney,

Beautiful sentimental treasure.

Without seeing it in person, I can’t say for sure, but I’d narrow it down to Blue Diamond, Kingman or Morenci.

We don’t appraise or give value from photos.

Enjoy ! That’s the main thing. Turquoise has a great power and feel to it.

I’m going to post the photo of your necklace on my blog so if anyone else has other ideas on the stones, they can chime in.

Paula

Dear Paula,

Thank you so much for your input, I appreciate it very much. Per your knowledge of turquoise and my further research, I am pretty sure the stones in my squash blossom necklace are from the Blue Diamond hat mine. I’m pretty happy about that. I knew it started production in the 1950′s and stopped in the 80′s. The mine is now buried under thousands of tons of rock, making Blue Diamond turquoise highly collectible today.

In the descriptions I’ve read, Blue Diamond is known for the triangular-shaped black chert, which is readily seen in the stones of my necklace. This is why I believe my stones are Blue Diamond. Plus, the pyrite is not silver colored as in the Kingman turquoise. Morenci turquoise doesn’t exhibit the black chert so recognizable in Blue Diamond. So, by process of elimination, I have concluded my squash blossom stones are Blue Diamond turquoise.

It will be interesting to read the input from your blog after you post the photo of the necklace. I’m no expert, but as in all things, when I become interested in something, I become a super sleuth until my desire for knowledge has been satiated. I too welcome your readers’ input.

Thank you for indulging me with this sleuthing, it’s been much fun, and of course I love the products on Horsekeeping,com.

Blessings,

Sydney

What do the designs on the INSIDE of my cuff bracelet mean?

Hi Paula

Do you know what the symbolism is, if any, of the design on the inside of the Bruce Morgan cuff I just purchased?

I see that it is quite similar to the designs on the inside of the Mary and Ken Bill and the Mary Bill cuffs.  Jeff

Hi Jeff,

The artists that use the designs on the inside of the cuffs……..when I’ve commented on the designs, the reply is something like “just to show we care” or “to add something extra”. It is something like when I asked people in the Midwest who decorate the front of their houses with a kind of storybook trim…… when I asked “why?”, they said “for nice” !!

So not so much a symbolism as just an indication of craftsmanship. When the artists stamp the front, which requires quite a bit of force on a bracelet as thick as yours, the inside is against a heavy mandrel. By placing a design stamp there, they are just showing they can pull off two procedures at the same time and all looks nice.

Some Native American designs symbolize things while others are just an artist’s design, not meant to represent anything.

That’s all that I know…………if anyone else has something to add, please submit a comment.

Paula

Will this Bracelet Fit?

Hi Paula,

I love the bracelet # nbs351a or # nbs351b but I am unsure about the sizing
My wrist measures 7 inches.

I measured my bracelet and it measures 6 inches with a 1 1/4 inch opening .

Will one of these fit?

Alison

Hi Alison,

Regarding the Julia Smith Wide Repousee Cuff Bracelet

Just to clarify:
Your wrist measures 7″ around where you wear a bracelet?
And your current bracelet measures 6″ from end to end inside plus a 1 1/4″ opening for a total of 7 1/4″ inches?

If that is correct, then these bracelets which measure 6 3/8″ and 6 5/8″ (that is the total INCLUDING the gap)…would be too small.

I have a 6 7/8″ wrist and just tried to put on NBS351B and it was too small (which is logical since it is 6 5/8″) ………..I usually wear a 6 3/4″ to 6 7/8″ bracelet.

You need to look for bracelets in the 7″ section which is here.

7″ refers to the total size, which is usually about the same size as your wrist.

The bracelets are arranged on the page in the order of size….so once you get to 6 7/8″ just look at everything from there on down the page………..
let me know if you have any other questions.

Also, note that when you purchase a very wide cuff like the Repousse bracelets, you need to get a slightly larger bracelet than if you buy a skinny one………the wider cuffs cover more of your wrist and arm so need to be a little bit bigger……

Paula

Cleaning Vintage Native American Jewelry

We often get vintage pieces in that have a wonderful patina but also a dash of Alfredo sauce or leftover silver polish in the nooks and crannies.

So how do we clean while preserving the endearing patina?

When we sell vintage pieces, we usually just leave them as is so the new owner can clean them to their personal taste.

But if there is dirt and debris in the stamping or silver work, we remove that. Usually a dry toothbrush and a wooden toothpick is all that is needed.

Loosen debris with a wooden toothpick

Brush with a dry toothbrush

Brushed clean

With my personal more contemporary sterling silver pieces (no stones), if I want to restore a brilliant shine, I either buff with a polishing cloth or use the procedure outlined in “Richard’s Method”.

IMPORTANT NOTE !! Great care should be taken when cleaning any sterling silver piece with stones. The pieces should NEVER be soaked as this would swell the backing (which is often sawdust or leather) and pop the stones out of their settings or damage them.

For sterling silver jewelry with stones and for pieces that I want to retain much of the vintage patina, I usually use a simple wash, dry and light hand buff combo. I use ordinary liquid hand soap (not antibacterial – something more like liquid Ivory) on a cloth or soft toothbrush to loosen debris and clean both the front and back of bracelets and pendants.  Then I rinse it well but carefully, avoiding the stone settings.  I follow this with a thorough drying and then token hand buffing with a silver polishing cloth. I stop at the point where the item is clean but still has its character.

I use a polishing cloth to maintain the shine in my new beads but if the oxidation gets ahead of me, I spritz them with Windex, taking care not to use too much because I don’t want it to run into the holes. I lightly spritz one section and then wipe right away. Less is more.

Because Old Town Trading Company was in the process of restringing an old squash blossom necklace for me (the subject of a future blog on repair), the topic of cleaning came up and here is what Diane of OTTP said:

While your necklace is disassembled, we’d like to wash the naja and blossoms. As you are definitely in favor of original patina, I want to explain this and get your approval first. I meet many, many people who do not want the surface of their silver touched in any way, not even to be cleaned. To me, there is a big difference in being “cleaned”, being “polished”, and being “buffed”. It’s mostly semantics, but I think there is a lot of confusion about what might be the best way to treat a piece of jewelry.

To me, buffing is something done with a buffing machine, in the shop. Buffing actually smooths the surface of the silver, and removes all those tiny fine lines and scratches that create the soft, beautiful look of a well worn piece. With very few exceptions, I don’t like to see anything buffed. The exceptions would be for pieces that are very contemporary or have a very bad scratch that detracts from the piece. A very few people like their pieces buffed smooth, regardless of the age or history of the piece.

Tiny fine lines and scratches can be replicated by working the surface with steel wool, but a trained eye will spot it every time. It can look nice, but it’s not “patina”… If a piece must be hot soldered for a repair, it must go through the buffing process – no way around it. Our smiths are awesome, but that is one of their biggest challenges – hot soldering on a vintage piece and retaining the “look”.

Polishing is using a chemical agent to clean the blackened tarnish from a piece of silver. Polishing (in my phraseology) doesn’t remove the scratches at all, but it can remove the oxidation that may have been applied to enhance the design of a piece. Oxidation can be very successfully reapplied (chemically) BUT most polishes will leave nasty residues in all the lovely details of this beautiful handmade stuff. The residue turns white or green or pink.  One of the few chemical “polishers” that doesn’t leave a residue (Tarnax) will actually dissolve turquoise and coral, among other things. I can’t tell you how many Tarnax victims we’ve repaired here. Polishing with any of this chemical stuff is really intended only for flatter manufactured pieces, like silverware, and even then, just cleaning it will frequently work better.

So, my favorite and most suggested technique is cleaning. A good washing (done properly, of course) will remove all the gunk, label residue, polish residue, grime, dust, cookie dough (yes we’ve removed that) and any other surface stuff that “shouldn’t be there”. The result is a piece that still has all the fine scratches, oxidation, and beauty (the “patina”) of an old piece, but it will show with a beautiful true silver glow, instead of a flat yellow gray appearance. In my opinion, it really enhances the piece.

We generally wash using the Tide Detergent technique (listed in the comments following the Richard’s Method article) and a soft toothbrush. Then we dry very thoroughly with a cloth which creates just a little bit of a glow.

We don’t wash beads, because they’re too hard to dry out properly. We would wipe them with a cotton glove only.

What is my scrap sterling silver jewelry worth?

What determines that jewelry is scrap? It depends on whether something is worthwhile to fix, has sentimental value, whether it is collectible, hallmarked, and other factors. 

Sterling Silver Scrap Native American Jewelry

When you are selling broken or otherwise unsalable sterling silver jewelry, you might be offered scrap price or melt value for the items.

And even if you have undamaged Native American jewelry and you take it to a pawn shop where the pawn broker isn’t interested in or knowledgeable about the value of Native American jewelry, you will likely be offered melt value.

Here’s how you can figure the melt value of your jewelry.

First be sure the items are sterling silver.  If you don’t have an acid test kit yourself, you can take the items to a jeweler to test for you.

Next you’d weigh the items. If there are a lot of stones or materials other than the sterling silver, you could either remove those so you’d get a more accurate sterling silver weight OR you could estimate how much of the weight is stone.  This will vary depending on the piece so you can make your guesstimate and likely the pawn shop owner will make his.

For an example, if a heavy silver bracelet that weighs 125 grams  has stones estimated to be 30% of the weight of the bracelet, then you would have 70% of the weight as sterling silver or 87.5 grams.

125 gram bracelet x .7 = 87.5 grams

Old bracelet used as an example

Sterling Silver Bar – 92.5% Silver
This bar happens to weigh 24.8 Troy Ounces

But sterling silver is only 92.5% silver, so of the 87.5 grams, only 80.9 grams are silver.

87.5 grams of sterling silver x .925 = 80.9 grams of silver

Pure silver bar
Ag is the chemical element symbol for Silver
This bar of silver happens to weigh 100 Troy Ounces

Silver is measured by troy ounces and there are 31.1 grams in a troy ounce. So in 80.9 grams of silver, you would have 2.6 troy ounces of silver.

80.9 grams divided by 31.1 grams per ounce = 2.6 troy ounces of silver

It costs to have sterling silver melted and purified, so if silver is running, say $30 an ounce, you might be offered $30 or less per ounce.

2.6 troy ounces of silver x $30 per troy ounce = $78.

Navajo Inlaid Knives by Doris Yazzie

Navajo silversmith Doris Yazzie purchases various knives, usually Buck or Schrade, that have wooden handles.

She then replaces portions of the wood with beautiful inlays of turquoise, lapis lazuli, coral, mother of pearl, acoma jet and sterling silver channels.

She adds her hallmark “DY” to one of the blades as well as “NAVAJO”.

What a good idea !!

Whirling Logs Silver Turquoise Belt Buckle

Hi Paula,

These are the photos of the Whirling Logs turquoise silver belt buckle I had e-mailed you about.  The buckle is approx. 3 and 3/4 inches wide by 2 and 1/2 inches tall.  The second photo — of the bear claw hallmark on the back — isn’t great, but I have no photo tweaking programs and I am about as computer illiterate as a person can be.  I hope it will do. I don’t know what the black pen mark “135—” means on the back of the buckle; I inherited these items from my father and don’t know if that’s what he paid for it back in the 60s or 70s or what.

I would like to know more about the piece: its age, what the hallmark means, et al.

Thank you so much.  Leigh

Hi Leigh,

First of all, what a nice treasure to inherit from your father.  I’ll mention some things I can tell from the photos and some things I can’t determine from photos.

First of all, whether or not this is sterling silver or a lesser silver (such as coin silver) or another metal can be determined by a simple acid test. Any jeweler can do this for you. Knowing the metal content will impact the value of the piece, so it is always good to know what you have that way. Reference “Not All Silver is Created Equal”.

As far as the stones, they appear to be natural turquoise stones set in smooth bezels. As far as what mine they would be from, I’d be guessing just using this one photo, but they are full of matrix and character and nicely placed. References “Types of Bezels” and “Turquoise Mines in the US” and “Green Turquoise”.

The magic marker number on the back is indeed the price. I’ve always thought that it is an odd way to mark a piece of art, but that has been the tradition with much Native American jewelry.   So that is likely what the asking price was for the buckle back when your father purchased it. Whether or not he paid that much, we don’t know because negotiating prices on Native American jewelry is common with many buyers – almost a hobby with them.

The piece seems consistent with the era you suggest – 1960s to 1970s..

I’d say it is a Navajo made belt buckle.

The hallmark is similar to many Navajo and Hopi badger or bear track hallmarks I have seen yet I don’t know of one that is exactly like this one, so I am afraid I have come up empty on the artist.

The whirling log design is described in my article on that topic here on this blog. “Whirling Logs”

Enjoy that unique belt buckle !

Richard’s Method for cleaning badly tarnished Sterling Silver

Occasionally we get a sterling silver piece in that is not old enough to have “earned” the distinction of patina yet looks so tarnished that it just doesn’t look good……………that’s when Richard uses this method to brighten up the piece.

I’m talking mainly about solid sterling silver pieces. When a piece has stones, although the method might not hurt the stones per se, soaking might loosen the setting, so would not be recommended.

Cleaning Tarnished Silver

This is the best method we have found for quickly and easily cleaning tarnished silver items. (Many jewelers have reported that this method will not harm turquoise and other gemstones, although steel and hematite may be affected. Do not use this method on items that should not be submerged in water.)

1. Place a double layer of aluminum foil in the bottom of a non-metallic container

2. Add enough hot water to cover the item

3. Add 2 heaping tablespoons of washing soda (sodium carbonate) or baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) (stores stock washing soda with laundry supplies – it works a bit faster than baking soda)

4. Place the tarnished item in the water to soak in contact with the aluminum foil for a few minutes (heavily tarnished items may take two or three treatments – if the water turns grey and the item is sitll tarnished, replace the solution)

5. When tarnish is gone rinse item thoroughly under running water

6. Buff dry with soft polishing cloth or towel to restore luster – the solution removes the tarnish, but buffing brings out the shine

For chains and liquid silver, you can make a thin paste of baking soda and water and rub it gently onto the piece with your hands and then place the item in the aluminum-lined tray with the very hot water.

After using this method, the items are so shiny that they really reflect the light !

While metal detecting found a vintage Boy Scout Badge or Native American pin?

Hi Paula,

I have been trying to see what this item is and thought it was a boy scout pin of some kind.  I found it while metal detecting near a spot here in Illinois where a pool had been in the early 1900′s.  It was pretty deep, leading me to think it has been lost for a long time, but you never know.

 It appears to be all silver because it was not tarnished in the least, is about 1.5 inches across the top.  The back is plain except for two loops that appear to be soldered on.  One is open to receive a pin, and the other appears to have held a pin that has corroded away.  My guess is the pin was not stiff and was intended to be inserted and then fed into the loop.  Does not seem like a good design, but that is all I can figure out.  No markings other than the symbols on the front.

I posted on a metal detecting site and asked if anyone knew what it was.  One person suggested it might be actually native american or trade silver.  The other suggested it might be an old scout “order of the arrow” award or honor.

Since you specialize in similar new native american items, I thought I would take a shot to ask if you had any clue.

Thanks

Frank

Hi Frank,

I can see why you might think this might be a vintage Boy Scout badge. It almost looks like something one might wear over the top button of a shirt with a collar. Or on a pocket flap.

To me it is reminiscent of Fred Harvey era Native American items such as were sold at Bell Trading Post.

Fred Harvey was an entrepreneur who created an avenue for Indians to make and sell jewelry to the tourists. Jewelry of the Fred Harvey era has typical Indian kitsch of arrows, tomahawks, tipis, thunderbirds and so on and was most produced from 1930 throughout the 1950s. Read more about Fred Harvey here.

The very symbols on your piece (crossed arrows and rain clouds with rain) were quite common on jewelry from that era.

Have you tested it for sterling silver or silver to verify?  Cool piece.

Maybe another reader will leave a comment here if they have seen something similar.

 

UPDATE JUNE 28, 2011

HERE ARE SOME PHOTOS OF THE BACK OF THE PIN TO SHOW SCALE AND TOOL MARKS.