THREE DEMENTIONAL VINTAGE NAVAJO CAST BRACELET

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Artist: Unknown

Circa: 1960's/70s

Provenance: Private collection

Our Price: $800.00

Availability: Usually Ships in 2 to 3 Business Days
Product Code: DACBR2

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Description

This lovely sandcast bracelet features a beautiful three-dimensional design, with the angles and blending of patterns. It gives you a feeling of depth and with how it was crafted. Just a beautiful and unusual bracelet. Whom ever did this bracelet was a master caster!

It measures 3/4" wide. The interior of the cuff measuring 5 1/2" with an opening gap of 1 1/8". Slightly adjustable. Not hallmarked.

Metal jewelry was introduced to the Navajo Indians by Plains tribes. In the mid-1860s, Navajo silversmithing began with the work of Atsidi Sani. The first silver jewelry-makers were Navajos living on the reservation. The practice of forming silver into objects of personal adornment soon spread to the Hopi and Zuni tribes. Casting silver was one of the earliest methods of making Conchas, buttons, rings and bracelets.

Early Navajo artisans developed a labor-intensive process for making silver jewelry called casting. Mexican and American silver coins were melted in crucibles with torches or over fires stoked by hide bellows. The molten metal was then poured into one-of-a-kind molds carved from volcanic tufa stone, moistened sand or harder sedimentary sandstone. Jewelry items such as bracelets were often cast flat, then worked into a rounded shape. The porous nature of the stone left distinctive pits and imperfections in the finished product.