Early Native American Hopi Jewelry: How to Identify Antique Hopi Jewelry

Native American jewelry expert Dr. Mark Sublette of Medicine Man Gallery with 25 years experience in the Indian art business gives tips on how to identify early Hopi jewelry. Excellent tutorial for beginning to advanced collectors on the characteristics one looks for when buying Hopi Native American old pawn jewelry.
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Early Native American Hopi Jewelry: How to Identify Antique Hopi Jewelry
Antique Hopi jewelry is some of the most beautiful jewelry today. A lot of people don't really think of Hopi as being the main type of jewelry when we talk about Native American arts, but it really is.
They have a very long history; it started about a hundred years ago (actually a little longer). Right at the turn of the century the Hopi started making jewelry; they learned from the Navajo and they continued the process through the Carlisle school, which was in Pennsylvania. This was an Indian school that the Hopi were forced to go to and so they picked up the process of making jewelry.
This early antique jewelry really is hard to tell between Zuni and Navajo. It has the same sensibilities, especially the early jewelry, which is kind of heavy ingot with single turquoise stones. But, about 1930 things really changed when we talk about Hopi jewelry, and that's really what I'd like to focus on today. There was a very
instrumental person - Mary Russell Farrell Colton. Her and her husband Harold started the museum in northern Arizona in 1928.
In 1930, they started the Hopi Crafts Guild Show, which was really all about authentic Hopi crafts - just Hopi. They wanted to promote the Hopi Native Americans and one of the things that they did was they encouraged them to make jewelry for the show, and at this time they started to see the very first marks on the authentic antique Hopi jewelry.
So, some of these early images of jewelry can be found actually still on exhibit at the Museum in Northern Arizona. I highly recommend that you go and visit them. In 1939, Mary Russell Farrell Colton actually wrote a letter to all the Hopis and said, “Silversmiths, if you're interested, why don't you consider making your jewelry very unique and different from the other jewelry being made and use your own design elements, like clouds and eagles and things.” She took this and many took this to heart and started making this type of authentic Native American jewelry.
So, you start seeing from the late 30s Hopi imagery being made on their Native American authentic jewelry. From 1941 to 45, we had a problem because of World War II - everything kind of stopped and really it didn't get going until about 1947 when the servicemen started coming home, and when that happened, one of the very best artisans was a guy named Fred Kabotie.
Fred Kabotie and Paul Saufkie started at the Hopi high school where they taught servicemen how to make authentic antique jewelry, and it was at this time they started to make a very unique type of jewelry, which is a silver overlay, and this is really kind of what we think about today when we think about authentic Hopi jewelry.
It's where there's a negative design that's cut out in the silver, which is oxidized to a black, then it's covered with another piece of silver. Later on in the sixties, they started to actually inscribe texture to the undercoat of the black. So, if you see this texturing you know this is a later piece of authentic Hopi jewelry.
In 1949, the Hopi Civil Craft began and that was a guild that was meant (for people) to make great jewelry for just Hopi people, and you'll still see this today; it continues today. So, the earliest jewelry - much of it is stamped and you can look up these stamp designs in a number of books. They are some of the finest Native American jewelry and always think of Hopi jewelry. You want to think of Hopi overlay jewelry using Hopi designs. So, the next time you're looking at Native American jewelry, don't forget about authentic antique Hopi jewelry.