Dig It - 5/20/24
Well, Well, Well, Fellow Seekers, what do we have here? Another Pile O Jewelry shot. Hell, these were fun to set up and shoot. Hell, it was fun to accumulate enough great stuff to have a “Pile” shot.
A couple of notes which might be of interest. The Ketoh in the back on the left side has a number of animal stamps - quail, rabbits and an abstract deer/elk. Now, I know that same quail stamp appears on a bracelet in the Millicent Rodgers collection. Birds, rabbits and deer/elk are all traditional food hunted by the Navajo, and the arrow is certainly their traditional hunting weapon. Ketohs protected the wrist when using a bow, and are worn by men to declare their prowess as warriors and hunters. These figurative types of stamps are usually associated with tourist items; however, because Ketohs were made almost exclusively for Native use, we can see there were exceptions.
Another piece of note is the elaborately stamped cuff in the center. There is an almost identical cuff, which is clearly by the same silversmith in the Laboratory of Anthropology’s collection. The Lab cuff is pictured in Mera’s book, page 11, plate 6. Mera dates the cuff to the late 1880s and I believe it had some connection to a family associated with the Santa Fe Railroad and Gallup, N.M. Now, I was lucky enough to be able to take my piece into the Lab and compare the two cuffs. They were nearly identical, same weight and, with one or two exceptions, had identical stamps. Some time later, I got another of these elaborately stamped cuffs. The maker was obviously somewhat prolific and if he was associated with the railroad and Gallup, his pieces could easily have been widely dispersed.
Dagnabitt, my throat’s dry from all this yaking. Time to relax, start the fire and have a cold one. See you on down the trail Fellow Seekers. -Lonesome