We met Peter Ray James nearly thirty years ago. Not only is he an incredibly talented artist, he is an amazing human being, always reaching out to help other people.
Tuesday, November 7, 2017 6:47 AM
We met Peter Ray James nearly thirty years ago. Not only is he an incredibly talented artist, he is an amazing human being, always reaching out to help other people.
Thursday, November 9, 2017 4:31 PM
Fritz Scholder occupies a unique spot in Native American Art. Many times during his career, he claimed that he was not an Indian, but the works that initially brought him to fame were a series on Native Americans.
He shocked the Native American art market with his paintings of Indians with beer cans, American Flags and some other wild stuff.
Read MoreThursday, December 14, 2017 4:50 PM
And she left a small collection of Indian Jewelry you might like!
Sallie was from Wheeling, West Virginia and was part of a steel mill family. She was a debutante and was raised with every advantage. She attended the University of Chicago, unusual for a woman in that day, and when she graduated, she moved to the Wide Ruins Trading Post in Arizona with her husband Bill Wagner.
Friday, January 12, 2018 11:08 AM
We are proud to host Charlie Daniels for a book signing of his memoir, Never Look at the Empty Seats, on Saturday January 20th at 2pm.
Charlie--in case you live on some other planet--is a country music legend. He is a man who is respected for his music, his dedication to his principles and his honest, straightforward and kind manner. This is a man everyone in Country Music looks up to. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016.
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.
Tuesday, February 6, 2018 7:31 AM
In 1983, when we first moved into our “new” gallery space, we were approached by several Navajo artists selling “Folk Art.” At the time, I was not real interested in it.
Bad mistake! What I didn’t realize was that these artists were really on the cutting edge of a new trend in Native American art.
Tuesday, February 27, 2018 11:56 AM
In the early 1970s, I was traveling around the West selling Navajo rugs and Indian jewelry to Indian theme shops, museum stores and National Park outlets.
Several customers in Wyoming, Montana and Colorado asked me if I could obtain Pueblo pottery for them. It was becoming more popular and there was a boom in anything Native American.
Monday, March 19, 2018 3:58 PM
Some years ago, the Hopi Tribal Council decided that the dolls that were called Kachinas should be given their traditional Hopi name of Katsinas.
What I have found is that most carvers still use the term Kachina, and we often do as well. There is no disrespect intended and we try to use whatever the carver prefers. In this writing I will probably go back and forth.
Wednesday, April 18, 2018 7:57 AM
Navajo Yeibichai weavings have been made since the early part of the 1900’s. They depict dancers in a healing or blessing ceremony that is performed after the first frost in the fall. The Yeibichai dancers represent the Yeis, Navajo deities, and are an essential part of the ceremony, which also includes a Navajo medicine man creating sand paintings.
Weavings depicting the Yei figures first appeared in the Shiprock area of the Navajo reservation. They were encouraged by traders in the area and became a traditional Navajo weaving pattern. The Yeibichai weavings were a natural evolution of the Yei patterns.
Friday, April 27, 2018 8:14 AM
We recently came across a very nice example of the type of Navajo rug that was woven in the 1903-1920’s era on the Navajo reservation at the Crystal Trading Post. The post was owned, in fact it was built, by a man named John B. Moore who had traveled much of the west before settling in the beautiful mountain area near the New Mexico and Arizona border.
Read MoreMonday, April 30, 2018 8:30 AM
After our email last week where I stated that J.B. Moore sold the Crystal Trading Post in 1911 and disappeared, possibly as the result of a scandal, I received a couple of emails. This one is from Mike Ryan, co-author of “The Great American Turquoise Rush 1890-1910.
Read MoreTuesday, May 1, 2018 11:30 AM