Native American Turquoise Jewelry

In the 1920's and 1930's, the concho belt changed from a single belt to a more ornate belt with one to multiple turquoise stones in all the individual sections of the belt. The tourist jewelry of that era is highly collectible today. It began to be noticed that sales of Native American Jewelry had significant potential to provide a reliable income source to tribal members across Arizona and New Mexico. During those years, schools and classes were established at several reservations to train young men in the trade of making Native American styles Sterling and turquoise jewelry. In the following decades, many very talented artists came out of these schools. During the years following WWII, many Americans traveled across the country, and on their trips through the Arizona-New Mexico area, discovered that local traders had rooms full of this Native American jewelry, which the traders called pawn pieces. Most of these were jewelry pieces the Indian people made for themselves and pawned for one of two reasons: either they needed money, or it was considered a safe storage place. As a result of the popularity of these pawn pieces, a host of trading posts sprang up in the Southwest and knowledge of this unique style of jewelry became much more widespread. New jewelry was also created to meet the growing tourist demand. Those who appreciated the beautiful American turquoise began to recognize the general difference in matrix patterns and color, etc. between the different mine sources. During this time, which extended to the early 1950's, turquoise began to be named, for sales purpose, after the mine in which it was found, such as Lone Mountain, Royston, Blue Gem, and others.

An increasing number of American Indians continued to handcraft silver jewelry in the 1950's and early 1960's in the traditional way. Up to that time their work was generally popular only in the southwest region of the US, but the increasing amount of material available began to enable a larger audience to see and appreciate this beautiful style of jewelry art. Even so,it did not become widely popular across the entire US until the late 1960's and early 1970's. At that time the simple and natural beauty of turquoise jewelry became the rage of the American fashion scene. The prices of the old pawn jewelry rocked upward, and a craze for Indian turquoise jewelry swelled and boosted demand (and prices) for turquoise to previously undreamed levels.

The increased prices and demand caused the re-opening of many mines and the import of Indian "style" jewelry made by manufacturers in Mexico, Taiwan, and the Philippines. In time, the market became glutted, the consumer was confused by overpriced synthetic, stabilized and plastic imitation materials and by 1981 the supply was height abut the demand was gone. The market collapsed and most of the American turquoise mines were shut down and have remained closed since that time. Turquoise demand hit a low water mark in the early 1980's , but has been slowly and steadily increasing in popularity since that time. Most American mines has remained closed and in recent years high demand for natural American turquoise has caused once again significant increases in prices.

Many artists have now started using a variety of other stone alone or to compliment their turquoise pieces. The belt pictured above is an good example. This sugalite stone concho is a beautiful work or art.

Hope you enjoyed a little history on the Native American Jewelry.

Gayla