About Us

Gallery

Business Policies

Contact

Home

“I enjoy showing people my methods because they reflect the traditional

ways my grandfather taught me. It is very important that these time-honored

skills be kept in the family and passed on to future generations.”

-Greg Lewis

At left, Greg Lewis making jewelry, Paguate Village, Laguna Pueblo, NM, c. 1976. At right, Greg Lewis, at left, and his son Dyaami Lewis, at right, c. 2008. Greg is still wearing the same bracelet he was wearing thirty-two years earlier in the photo at left.

Left photo by Lee Marmon. Photo source and © Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico. Right photo source and © marthastruever.com

A beautifully-crafted Acoma/Laguna Pueblo copper, and possibly silver, cuff bracelet by Greg Lewis, c. 1990’s

This beautiful bracelet has a whole lot of authentic goodness to it. Made from handwrought heavy copper the bracelet is crafted in the time honored and time-consuming traditional manner; with a beautifully hand-hammered

slab of heavy copper used to form the bracelet’s shank then the shank being finely and artistically decorated with beautifully-executed stamp work designs.

This is the talented Acoma/Laguna Pueblo jeweler, Greg Lewis (1954-2022) at his very best. Greg was one of the very few contemporary Native American silversmiths who also worked in copper. He loved it in fact, as he personally told us many times, and he worked with it ever since he first apprenticed for his Grandfather, the renowned Acoma Pueblo silversmith, Alvin Concho Lewis (Active 1920’s-1980) who taught him his craft and set him on his artistic path.

Like his traditionally-minded Grandfather, Third-generation Acoma-Laguna Pueblo silversmith Greg Lewis was a very old-style fellow, he made things like he was still living back in the 19th century and in a very real sense he was. He lived and worked way out off the beaten path in the tiny Laguna Pueblo village of Paguate about 50 miles as the crow flies west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, under the shadow of the ancient volcano, Mount Taylor. He worked in his small hand-built stone house with handmade tools he mostly made himself and he made his jewelry in the classic traditional manner in which he was taught. In recent years, Greg has often worked in conjunction with his son and apprentice, Dyaami Lewis, but this piece was made well before that.

The bracelet’s shank has been elaborately decorated with interesting, finely-executed stamp worked designs, a panel of elaborate abstracted foliate designs down the bracelet’s center which is flanked on both sides by borders of interspersed arrow and Maltese cross designs. Interestingly, there are some indications that the copper body of

this bracelet might have been mixed or alloyed with some amount of silver to some degree, the copper color appears somewhat lighter and less deep red-orange than an all copper piece would generally be and there is some silver residue visible inside the bracelet’s shank in some of the casting declivities and the interior surfaces of some of the stampworked designs like the arrows and the fine stamping around the foliate designs in the middle panel appear just slightly silvery. It would be wonderful to be able to discuss this possibility with Greg as this sort of artistic imagination, experimentation and technical wizardry was right down his alley, but alas this cannot be done.

The bracelet measures 1 3/4” in continuous width all the way around and the copper shank is approximately 1/16” in thickness. The inner circumference end-to-end is 5 1/2” and the gap between the terminals is 1 1/4” for a total inner circumference is 6 3/4”. The bracelet weighs a substantial 86 grams or 3 ounces and it is in excellent original condition for its now 30-35 or so years of age. The bracelet has some of what we might euphemistically call “funk” to it, it has a rich aged patina and looks much older than it is and if you didn’t know for certain that it wasn’t, you would swear it was a hundred or so year old historic piece. The bracelet’s terminals are just the slightest bit misaligned which is of no real consequence and which only serves to underscore and highlight the completely handmade and terrific overall rustic nature and character of the piece.

The bracelet is properly signed on the interior with Greg Lewis’ customary arrowhead hallmark, a cherished hallmark he inherited from his Grandfather. We have had quite a few pieces of Greg Lewis’ unique handwrought Pueblo jewelry over the past 35 or so years that we have known him and we can say that this is one of the most striking looking and interesting pieces of his we have ever had, it’s a beautiful, dynamic copper and silver mixed metal jewelry sculpture.

We were fortunate to spend a considerable amount of personal time with Greg Lewis through the mid-to-late 1990’s watching him work, discussing his methods and purchasing and commissioning various of his pieces. It was a pleasure to call him a friend and colleague. Greg is gone now, working up at that great silversmith’s bench in the sky, but the beauty of his classic, timeless pieces and the immense satisfaction one gets from owning and wearing them, lives on.

SOLD