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A beautiful and historic Fred Harvey
Company style Trading Post-era Navajo copper and turquoise cuff bracelet, c.1930’s
Historically, the earliest Navajo bracelets were not made of silver, they were made of copper and sometimes brass. These common metals in the form of old cast-off copper kettles, brass pots and scavenged copper telegraph wire and pennies were far cheaper and easier to come by in the remote reaches of Navajoland than precious silver.
Not many Navajo silversmiths continued working with copper after silver became more generally available so early 20th Century copper bracelets like this are fairly rare and fairly difficult to come by today and they are both wonderful pieces of Navajo jewelry and fascinating and unique relics of both Navajo and our collective American Southwestern cultural history.
One of the places where a small number of Navajo copper bracelets continued to be made throughout the 1920’s and 30’s were in various Southwestern trading posts scattered across New Mexico and Arizona, primarily along
old U.S. Route 66 in places like Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Gallup New mexico and Winslow, Holbrook and Flagstaff Arizona, a number of which were run by The Fred Harvey Company and which catered to the booming Southwestern tourism and curio trade occurring at that time. The best of these types of “Tourist” pieces, such as this bracelet, were made by experienced older Navajo bench silversmiths who had decades of silversmithing and considerable talent under their belts so even though these pieces are oriented and made as souvenirs for a tourist market they were still traditionally crafted with considerable quality and integrity.
"If you ever plan to motor West,
Travel my way take the highway, that's the best
Get your kicks on Route Sixty Six."
-Song lyric source and © Bobby Troup




This bracelet shows all the evidence of that, it is very beautifully and traditionally hand made with a central
deep repoussee and an entire plethora of finely-applied Fred Harvey style Southwestern themed stamps from thunderbirds, to sun symbols, stars, lightning bolts, arrows, crescents and rosettes. The bracelet is most beautifully finished off by the placement of two fine very nicely-matched oval-shaped greenish- blue turquoise stones with light brown matrix, most likely from the ancient and historic Tiffany Cerrillos turquoise mine in
New Mexico about 20 miles south of Santa Fe. The stones are very nicely set in old style “foldver”-type silver bezels. (Copper is generally too hard and brittle to make bezels with.) This bracelet stands precisely astride an older, more traditional era and a newer, more modern era in the American Southwest and in a most fascinating
and attractive way it shows the clear influences of both to those who can appreciate it.
Since this bracelet was made some years before Navajo silversmiths began signing their pieces, we will never know the name of the anonymous Navajo bench smith who made it, but he obviously had considerable skill and experience and this bracelet is most finely crafted and here comes the old style part of the equation here. Copper is notoriously more difficult to work with than silver particularly in primitive conditions as its melting point is some 200 degrees higher and it is a harder metal to work with than silver. Copper measures 3 on the standard Mohs metal hardness scale and silver is 2.5 which makes copper that much more difficult to heat, hammer and stamp
so it requires a silversmith with even more technical ability. But, even though copper is more problematic and demanding to work with than silver technically, artistically, copper metal more than makes up for its difficulty
by being wonderfully expressive and rewarding due to its beautiful reddish-brown color and the lovely way it patinates with age as you can clearly see here with this bracelet.



The bracelet measures 1 3/4" in width at its widest center point and tapers down to 3/4" in width at the terminal ends. The inner circumference end-to-end is 6 1/4" and the gap between the terminals is 7/8" for a total interior circumference of 7 1/8". The bracelet weighs a substantial, but quite comfortable and easy to wear 76 grams or
2 3/4 ounces. It is in excellent original condition overall and has developed a fine patina over its near century
or so of age. One of the two turquoise stones has a very slight crack, but is completely secure in its bezel.
There is also a very tiny amount of what appears to be old polishing residue here and there and we would leave
this completely alone, but it could be easily removed, if desired.
This bracelet is a distinctively beautiful piece of jewelry and a fascinating and romantic slice of old Southwestern American history all wrapped up in one very handsome package at a very attractive price. It looks and feels like
the wide open desert spaces, endless sunsets and the open road and the raw dusty charm of the old Route 66,
our so-called original “Mother Road” through the great Southwest where the bracelet was most likely first sold maybe even to your own Grandma or Auntie back in the day. Ours bought and loved having pieces like these and yours might very well have too!
SOLD













In the early decades of the 20th century, the Fred Harvey Company operated a number of Indian trading posts across the American Southwest. One of the finest of these was the Indian Building at Albuquerque's Hotel Alvarado on Route 66. This bracelet could have very easily been sold there. At left, a postcard of the Indian Building, c. 1905. At right, a postcard of the interior of the Indian Building, c. 1905.
Left and right photo source and © Fred Harvey Company