Native American Indian Jewelry: How to identify early Navajo Silversmith Jewelry Tools

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 Navajo silversmith tools. Excellent tutorial for beginning to advanced collectors on the methods used to craft early Native American old pawn jewelry.

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Native American Jewelry: How to identify early Navajo Silversmith Jewelry Tools

One of the most interesting things about Navajo jewelry and early jewelry is understanding how it was made, and the tools really will tell you a lot.

It’s very, very rare to see a set like this. This set probably dates from at least the turn of the century and probably even earlier. You have certain objects that were used, and they can help you identify early Navajo jewelry just by the material itself - just by these tools.

For instance, this is used for drilling holes; it's a pump drill, and the Navajo silversmiths would spin it around, and use it as the mechanism to drill different pieces of turquoise, and when you look at this, you can see it's gradated at the bottom on the tip, and what that tells you, if you look at early beads, and there is a very cone-shape like appearance, (then) you know that's a pump-drilled turquoise bead, and that means something, (that means) it's early. It's probably somewhere between the 20s or even before that (it could even be from the 1890s 1880s), so it's important to understand the types of material that were used in making the Navajo jewelry.

You have silversmith tools, like scissors that were made by themselves. These things were handmade; everything here is handmade. You have different types of stamp work. This would be used out of old bits and old tools that the silversmiths would hand make, and you can see how it's all broken up on the top from massive use.

In fact, I've had many jewelers who have wanted to buy the set, and wanted to buy the dye shots because they can use these in their own jewelry, and reproduce things that may have that older look. Of course, I don't want to sell this because it's an important historical artifact of the Navajo silversmiths. In fact, it's been on loan to museums for a long period of time.

But, it's important to understand when you're looking at Native American jewelry (early stuff), that you want to look for things like these early Navajo silversmith tools that will explain how the jewelry was made.

If you have any questions, you can always contact the Medicine Man Gallery with regards to your jewelry old or not. But, one of the main things you'll look at with old jewelry is look for wear, and look for early designs that may have been used – using silversmith tools just like this. Thanks.