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Tuesday, June 7, 2022 11:27 AM
Coral became a popular material for Native artists to work with hundreds of years ago when European Traders began to bring it to the Southwest as a trade item. Early on, the small pieces of coral were drilled and strung on necklaces made of drilled shell beads and, usually, pieces of turquoise.
Read MoreWednesday, June 3, 2020 8:24 AM
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.
Read MoreWednesday, April 1, 2020 7:28 AM
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.
Read MoreSaturday, March 21, 2020 2:18 PM
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.
Read MoreTuesday, November 12, 2019 10:03 AM
Tuesday, January 16, 2018 3:01 PM
The coral you find in jewelry really isn’t. It is a calcium carbonate skeleton that is produced by coral polyps that live in clean, rich tropical and subtropical oceans.
Coral has been used for jewelry back some 25-30,000 years. Many people around the Mediterranean, where most of the deep red coral was originally found, used it for jewelry. The Egyptians and Romans place high value on it.
Friday, September 8, 2017 3:24 PM
The Fall Gallery Walk was founded in 1983 by the four original members of the Durango Gallery Association. Toh-Atin Gallery is the last one standing of the original group and we are happy that the Gallery Association continues to grow in both numbers and quality.
Tuesday, September 5, 2017 9:03 PM
Many of our customers have been to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show during the winter. It's a huge show that takes up the entire city. It's become so big and so spread out that it is really overwhelming.
Wednesday, April 5, 2017 2:23 PM
During the late 1960's and early 1970's, Indian jewelry was incredibly popular. Turquoise and silver jewelry was being turned out by shops in Albuquerque, Gallup, Farmington, Flagstaff and other "border" towns in massive quantities.
Wednesday, March 8, 2017 2:13 PM
There have been several great books written about American Turquoise, most of them photographic and with basic background on the different mines. But, unless you really are an avid fan of the “Sky Stone,” they don’t do a lot to hold your interest. Now that has changed.