Any information on this well worn buckle?

Hi Paula,

I wonder if you know anything about this old buckle. Tony

Hi Tony,

It is chip inlay.

Chip inlay is a method where cavities in jewelry are filled with a mixture of crushed stone, typically turquoise and coral, and epoxy resin. The piece is then polished smooth after the resin has hardened. Navajo Tommy Singer is credited for first using chip inlay in Native American jewelry.

It is of a peyote or water bird – you can read about that symbol by clicking this phrase.

It is likely by Tommy Singer, Navajo silversmith.  Here are some articles about other Tommy Singer pieces.

Pin Pendant

Pin

What tribe are these rings from and when?

I wear these rings daily. They are my personal rings and are just wondering when and what tribe they may be from. Was told dates between 1930 and 1950. Nothing confirmed on tribe. No markings inside band just silver folding marks on ring without the coral.

Thanks again, Wade

Hi Wade,

These chip inlay rings look like they are Navajo made. As to when they were made, well since chip inlay techniques are said to have been invented in the 1960s by Tommy Singer , these rings are probably from after that, most likely 1970s or later.

We have some rings very similar to these in our pawn shop .

What is Chip Inlay?

Chip inlay is a method where cavities in jewelry are filled with a mixture of crushed stone, typically turquoise and coral, and epoxy resin. The piece is then polished smooth after the resin has hardened. Navajo Tommy Singer is often credited for first using chip inlay in Native American jewelry.

Over 100 Hallmark Queries in the last few weeks !

All of a sudden everyone has been wondering about hallmarks !! I’ve received a steady stream of queries since early November so I am going to post my standard reply here.

With that said, I am an enormously busy elf with Christmas right around the corner…..so it will be well after the New Year before I will have the opportunity to begin replying to hallmark queries again.

I wish I had a clone or two so I could do everything !

Here is the standard reply I send out to hallmark queries so you have a head’s up as to how the process works…….Paula

Hello!

Thank you for your question about your Native American jewelry. Because we have a high volume of questions, I’ve put together a general response. Please ignore the portions that don’t apply to your situation.

We answer questions about Native American items on our blog – photos are required to illustrate the post.

We don’t do appraisals via email and photos.  If you are selling your piece, read on.

Whether your are asking a question or want to sell, you can send your specific questions along with 1 or 2 medium sized photos only of the item and hallmark (to the email address I supply when you send a query).

Guidelines for sending photos are outlined here.

If your email is larger than 1000 KB, it will go to SPAM due to our email rules and we will not receive it or see your photos. So please just send one or two reasonably sized photos to start. If I need more I will ask for them.

Please name the photos so we have a person’s name or item name to tie the photo to your email.

Please let us know if you are asking for your personal information or because you want to sell the piece.

If you are selling, this article will be helpful to read.

We answer theses queries as time allows on this blog. We usually only answer questions that have good quality photos to accompany the post. The questions are answered in the order they are received and there are usually about 30 queries in the queue.

Unfortunately, we won’t have time to answer queries over the Holidays but we look forward to corresponding with you in the New Year !

Paula, Manager
Horsekeeping  www.horsekeeping.com

Some of the Concho Belts from the White Buffalo Collection

What a diverse group of belts I’ve been researching this week. Here are a few samples from the White Buffalo Collection.

Irene Chiquito, Navajo

 

Navajo Blanket Design Overlay by DB

 

Tommy Singer, Navajo

 

R & G Daye, Navajo

 

History

The word concho comes from the Spanish “concha” which actually means “conch” or “seashell” but has come to mean round or oval disks (occasionally rectangles) of silver used to decorate saddles, bridles, clothing, used as jewelry such as for pendants and bolo ties and for adorning or making belts.

Concho belts are a long-time Navajo tradition yet it has been suggested that the Navajo borrowed conchos from Mexican tack items or from the Plains Indians.

The earliest conchos were silver dollars that were hammered, then stamped and edged, then slotted and strung together on a piece of leather.

Later in the evolution of concho belts, copper loops were added to the back of the conchos so that the conchos could be slipped onto a leather belt.

To read the complete article click here.

Nice Coral in Older Pawn Pieces

I love to get the older pawn pieces into our store because, for one reason, the quality of the stones and coral is usually much nicer than a similar item made today.

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.

 

 

Sending Photos with your Native American Jewelry Queries

When you want to ask a question about your vintage items, please use the “Ask Paula a Question” feature in the right hand column of this blog. Then, I will reply to you from my email address so you can send me photos. Photos are key for me to be able to help you identify your items.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you’ve seen a wide range of photo quality. The photos from our website are by yours truly but the ones with the queries are sent by readers. By the time you see them, I have already spent quite a bit of time tweaking the photos to get them to show at their best. But some are almost too poor to use. The better the photo, usually the more detail I can see and the more thorough an answer I can supply.

Here are some tips.

To avoid blurry photos and get the necessary detail, set  your camera to its close up setting and read in your instruction manual how close you should be for close ups. If you are TOO close it will be blurry. Blurry photos don’t do either of us any good.

Then do a little bit of tweaking to the photo. If you don’t have a favorite photo program, you might want to try IrfanView.

With a photo program you can crop and resize the photos.

For example, here is a raw photo right from my camera followed by a cropped version and then a resized version. While you might not see a big difference between the second and third photos, my email box FEELS a big difference as the cropped resized one, although it has enough information, it doesn’t have so much that it bogs my computer down receiving the photos. So……….take a look.

Raw photo directly from camera card is 2048 x 1536 pixels and 1131 KB

Cropped photo 738 x 624 pixels and 277 KB

Resized photo is 400 x 338 pixels and 97 KB

Please send photos that are:

In focus.

Attached to the email, not pasted into the email and not as a link I have to click to go get the photos.

Cropped.

Resized. I request that you use 400 pixels as the largest dimension of the width if the photo is a horizontal or 400 pixels as the largest dimension of the height if the photo is a vertical.

Along with the photos, it helps if you send dimensions such as height, width and weight.

You can also put a dime or pencil in the photo to give a sense of scale.

Bear fetish with dime for scale.

If you are going to send hallmarks, you need to use a high resolution on your camera, set to close up and then crop. For example, here is a copper pendant and its hallmark.

Copper pendant 373 x 400 pixels

Copper pendant hallmarked cropped to 236 x 302 pixels

Let me know if you have any questions !

1970-80s Native American Hallmark in Arrowhead Shape

Hello,
I inherited from my aunt a love of Native American Art and recently an old (1970 or earlier) squash blossom necklace with the hallmark of a mountain shape, inside of which is what looks like a partial arrowhead or pine tree (no letters) on the back of the naja.
I would love to know more about the artist, if possible.
Thank you for any assistance you can give me…this is an inheritance that I will treasure.
Sincerely,  Jane

Hello Jane,

I have not seen this hallmark nor was I able to find it in any of my reference books. But I have posted it here in case someone else knows the mark.

I will say this much though. From the one photo, it seems to me that this is not a mountain but a sterling silver plate of that shape that has been silver soldered onto the back of the naja to give the artist a place to stamp the arrowhead. But that is just my take on it from one photo.

Also, the use of the hallmark “Sterling” was not too common until the late 70s or 80s.

It is always helpful to send photos of the piece because the style and materials often tell a lot. So feel free to send me photos of the piece itself and I will add them to this post.

Antiques Roadshow says eBay effect has flooded collectibles market

A recent article in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine (May 2011)

“What’s Hot at the Antiques Roadshow”

has some interesting information related to vintage Native American jewelry. Here’s a quote:

“Call it the eBay effect. Once-scarce items now flood the online auction sites, tipping the scales of supply and demand and diluting values. Throw in the impact of the economic downturn — during which some folks desperately scoured their attics and basements in search of anything to sell that could help them pay their bills — and the result is a perfect storm: a decline in prices for most collectibles and antiques.”

The value of an item is not only determined by its appraised material value but also its history, or provenance. That is the story behind who obtained the item, how, when and where and any other interesting details associated with the piece. When someone asks me to help them identify and value their piece, I always ask them for the back story.

When we first purchase or obtain something, all the details are fresh in our mind and we think we will always remember the story but pull that same bracelet out 15 years later and the details might be somewhat fuzzy. That’s why it is best to write some key info such as date, price, artist’s name, where obtained and so on on a piece of paper and store it with the item. Or keep a notebook with such info. It will come in handy and could increase the value of your piece.

Read my related post.

The Great American Sell Off of Possessions including Jewelry

The Great American Sell Off of Possessions including Jewelry

In the current issue of Smart Money magazine, there is an article called The Great American Sell Off which talks about people trying to sell their possessions in record numbers.

This includes jewelry.

Right now, there is no shortage of things to buy. At liquidation and estate sales, buyers are purchasing the small less expensive items. There isn’t a whole lot of cash out there to buy non-essentials.

When liquidators tell people what cash they should expect to get for their items, they say take what you paid for it (or what it has been appraised at for insurance purposes) and remove a zero from the end,

That sounds rough but that’s the reality. Using that thumb rule, if a lot has been appraised at $6000 by an insurance appraiser, then its cash value today is about $600.

Read the article – very interesting !

Do We Buy Jewelry?