A few weeks ago, we had a newsletter about the inlay work of Navajo artist Sylvana Apache. She and her husband, Randy Secatero, are also accomplished traditional silversmiths.

A favorite artist of just about everyone is Santo Domingo jeweler, Ray Lovato. Over the years, I’ve written several newsletters about him. One of the best newsletters, in my humble opinion, described a great afternoon that I spent with Ray in a Walmart parking lot trading turquoise for jewelry.

Southwestern Indian tribes have long incorporated stone and shell carvings resembling animals in their religious beliefs. These fetishes are objects in which a spirit is thought to reside, and they can be used to aid the person who owns and cares for it.

A lot of you know that my father was a Pepsi Cola dealer in Durango and got into the Navajo Rug business by trading Pepsi accounts for rugs with the trading posts. One of the jobs that I had before I got out of college was driving a Pepsi delivery truck and a couple of my routes were on the Northern Navajo reservation.

A couple of months ago, we sent a newsletter that talked about one of our favorite silversmiths, Jeanette Dale, that featured a beautiful sterling silver necklace and earring set made with #8 Turquoise from a mine by that name in the Lynn Mining District of Eureka County, Nevada.

In the 1970s, when the #8 Turquoise Mine in Eureka County, Nevada was closing, Jeanette Dale was soldering circuit boards at the Fairchild Electronics Plant south of Farmington, New Mexico. 

I was a couple of years behind Jake Dalla at Durango High School. He was a cool guy. He had a sharp car and he was always nice, even to underclassmen!

This fourth generation Durangoan came from one of the many early Italian families that settled in the Durango area. One of his goals in life was to create a wildlife park and recreation area in honor of his parents.

Storyteller jewelry by Navajo silversmiths have been popular for about 50 years. Not a lot of artists make this style, as it requires a special artistic talent and a lot of time. 

Silver figures of people, hogans, horses, clouds, sheep and even an occasional outhouse are individually cut out of sheet silver and then soldered onto a second sheet that is sometimes stamped with other designs.

Our major focus for Gallery Walk is a great showing of Stanton Englehart’s paintings but something else came up that is just too good not share. 

We recently met a gentleman from the Colorado Front Range whose father had passed. It turns out that his father was an avid collection of American Indian belt buckles. He may have been a little more than avid!

On November 3 in Denver, we will be holding the 33rd Annual Benefit Silent Auction and Sale of Navajo Weavings (and we have now added Indian Jewelry) to benefit the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History.

If you have never been to a Gem and Mineral show, don’t pass this one up! It is worth your time with over 500 dealers and some of the most unique things you have seen in your life.

What does it mean to be the “first” to do something? It takes the ability to put your ego on the line and to take a chance with the confidence that it will work out.

Zuni Silversmith Dan Simplicio was one of those people. He lived a short life of 52 years, passing away in 1969. He was the first to use coral in its natural form, the first to set rough cut coral in rings and he introduced the common use of leaf work in Zuni jewelry.