work by southwest Native American artisans        

        jewelry by Micheal and Susan Cabnet, Haddonfield NJ

      All but one or two of the above posts are of traditional southwest native American design, produced by contemporary artists and mainly on an individual item by item basis.

  The groups represented here are Navajo, Hopi, Zuni and several pueblo artists.

      Most items shown are of the "high end" and high quality variety. Value and price are usually determined by quality of craftsmanship and quality and clarity of the turquoise and other stones used.

       Turquoise comes from several areas in the southwest and source can be determined by the color, blue-Arizona, green-Nevada etc.

        A good Squash blossom necklace can sell for as much as 15,000 us, with some of the "antique" examples going at auction houses like Christy's for enormous sums.

        The next series of photos will be of the lower end in price and mostly come from "production benches".  Still handcrafted, but not as creative and using Pre-manufactured components.    

Thanx in advance for patience.  I'm doing this between heavy doses of real life to keep from losing my marbles.    

Originally posted by o_irengun every  piece of  valuable  stone or valuable metall  in hands of an armenian Jeweller Master.The armenians  are the Kings of jeweller  haandwork.Excuse me my turkish  friends

dont forget assyrians

Originally posted by merced12 Originally posted by o_irengun every  piece of  valuable  stone or valuable metall  in hands of an armenian Jeweller Master.The armenians  are the Kings of jeweller  haandwork.Excuse me my turkish  friends dont forget assyrians

   Don't talk-   Show us!

ok red clay

red clay

  http://www.goldas.com/English/index.asp - http://www.goldas.com/English/index.asp

http://www.midas.com.tr/ - http://www.midas.com.tr/

http://www.atasay.com/index.html - http://www.atasay.com/index.html

http://www.goldas.com/English/index.asp -  

        Thats nice work. Is it done by individual artists or a production studio?          ;    

         A production studio is not "a factory" It's usually a small private workshop where several skilled craftsmen work under an experienced and highly skilled artist/designer.

in turkey generally  have small private workshops but dilan,goldas,atasay are very big company.

Turquoise is a robin’s egg blue gemstone that is probably one of the oldest gemstones known. Its prized blue color is so distinctive that its name is used to describe any color that resembles it. Turquoise gets its color from the heavy metals in the ground where it forms. Chemically, turquoise is a hydrated phosphate of copper and aluminum and is formed by the percolation of meteoric or groundwater through aluminous rock in the presence of copper.

Turquoise is most often found in arid, semiarid or desert places such as Iran, Tibet, China, Australia, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, and in Southwest U.S. Blue turquoise forms when there is copper present which is the case with most Arizona turquoise. Green turquoise forms where iron is present, the case with most Nevada turquoise. Matrix is the host rock or the mother rock that can be made from several different elements such as pyrite, chert (an extremely dense type of quartz), quartz, cuperite (a copper oxide mineral with as much as 88% copper), and manganese oxide. Some turquoise such as spider web turquoise is made up of small nuggets naturally cemented together with rock or matrix, and when cut and polished, the stone resembles a spider web. Turquoise has been used extensively by both Southwestern U.S. Native Americans and by many of the Indian tribes in Mexico. Before 1880, the Native Americans had made solid turquoise beads, carvings, and inlaid mosaics. The Native American Jewelry or “Indian style” jewelry with turquoise mounted in or with silver is relatively new.

In the 1880’s and early 1900’s, miners discovered significant deposits of high-quality turquoise in the western and southwestern United States that was just as fine as those of the finest Persian turquoise found in Persia, which for thousands of years, was the finest intense blue turquoise in the world. Today, the majority of the world’s finest-quality turquoise comes from the United State. The U.S. is now the largest producer of turquoise. Turquoise and sterling silver metal is shaped into jewelry pieces by Native American Indian tribes of the southwest U.S. including Navajo from Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, Hopi from northern Arizona and Zuni from western New Mexico, and also by outside contractors.

Turquoise jewelry has been largely accepted in recent years and has resulted in higher price, therefore, because of the higher price of turquoise and the increase in demand, an industry emerged with the manufacture of synthetic and simulated turquoise. Its creation, with the use of earthy or highly porous types of turquoise, is pressure-impregnated with hot acrylic resins that improves the color, hardness, and durability of the inexpensive porous, poorly colored or nearly colorless materials to make them suitable for jewelry use. For nature to create minerals with one vein of turquoise, this is rare and is an improbable product of an incalculable number of chemical and physical processes that must take place in the right combination and proper environment over a time span of hundreds to millions of years.

   The items in the last 4 posts are all handcrafted, but done in a production studio vs an individual artist/craftsman.  Values run from 15.99 to 60.00 us.

    Most of the turquoise is either man made or "enhanced". 

     I have tried to spare everyone the experience of " Navajo Jewelry from the Southwest".  Translation- made by Ziggie Navaho from Southwest Philly. YO! Y'all.

      your welcome, that was fun. I took two years of jewelry smithing in college, no I am not skilled and haven't worked at it since, but I do know a little about it.

       I haven't taken a serious look at what's being done in years. I was hoping we would have kicked up a little more interest and input from others.  I know there is some fine work done in Sweden, finland just for example, I would have liked to have seen some examples.