Jeanette Dale ranks near the top in the Traditional Navajo Silversmiths category. She comes from a family of artists. Her mother, father, and brother were accomplished silversmiths, and another brother, Eugene Joe (Baatsoslani), is arguably the finest sand painter on the Navajo Nation.

Wilson and Carol Begay were raised at Manulito, not far from Gallup. Carol went to school at the Navajo Bible Mission by the Catholic Church there. One of her earliest memories of Wilson was when he and a group of boys would come to the school to play basketball. Carol's mother always told her not to hang around with those boys and to come home if they were down at the school.

Jeanette Dale and her husband Harry live on the Navajo Nation, about halfway between Gallup and Shiprock, off to the west of the highway near a beautiful rock formation. For about fifty years, she has been known to dealers in Indian jewelry as one of the best and least-known Navajo silversmiths.

One of the most exciting things in this business occurs when people inherit stunning art, jewelry, pottery, and even Navajo rugs that have never been worn or displayed.

How about that? According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, turquoise is having a jewelry resurgence! I did not realize it had gone out of style, but I guess that’s from living in the Desert Southwest!

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.

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.

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. 

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.