Navajo Silver Round Dish with a Variety of Stamped Designs [SOLD]

This round silver dish or tray does not have any signature or identifying marks of the maker.  It could have been made by a Diné artisan of the Navajo Nation, or possibly by one of the many shop-based manufacturers of “Indian” jewelry.  As early as the 1920s, businesses hired Native American artists to produce items of silver in their shops.  The artisans, in some instances, were taught how to operate machines that were used to expedite manufacturing of silver objects.  By hiring Indians to do the work, the items were authentic Indian-made.

The H. H. Tammen Company of Denver, Frank F. Hurd, also of Denver, Maisel’s Indian Trading Post of Albuquerque, Bell Trading Post, also of Albuquerque, and others were early innovators in producing handmade silver items assisted by machines for designs.

When an item is not signed with the name of the maker, it is difficult to make an attribution and to state whether it was made by an individual artisan or an artisan working in a merchant’s shop.

This dish or tray was most definitely designed with the tourist in mind.  It has a profusion of design elements to appeal to a traveling visitor—arrows, birds with whirling log or swastikas, crossed arrows, and an eye-catching whirling log or swastika as the central focal point.  The design is typical of the style easily stamped in a machine press.  With the swastika elements, it is easy to state that this was made before the 1930s, possibly as early as the 1920s.

Whether an item was completely handmade by a Native artist, or handmade by an artist assisted with mechanical devices is not unlike processes used today in the manufacture of silver items.  Artists today use commercial tools—electric drills, buffers, sheet silver, anvils, hammers, and other mechanical devices.  The use of a machine in the 1920s to assist an artist is not unlike processes today.  One should not treat these items from the 1920s with any less respect than items being made today.

Condition: this Navajo Silver Round Dish with a Variety of Stamped Designs is in excellent original condition

Provenance: from the collection of a gentleman from Colorado

Recommended Reading: The Native American Curio Trade in New Mexico by Jonathan Batkin

Relative Links: Diné of the Navajo Nation, Southwest Indian Jewelry: Silver Objects