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A unique and beautifully-crafted heavy Navajo silver cuff bracelet by Jack Adakai, c.1960’s

The art world is not always fair to artists and sometimes things slip through the cracks and great artists do not always get the great fame and great public recognition that the quality of their great work merits them. This has often been the case historically as well as in the prefect example of the great 15th Century Italian Renaissance painter, Andrea del Vercocchio (1435-1488) whose paintings are magnificent and sublime but who is not widely well known at all, and certainly not nearly as famous or as highly prized in the marketplace as the work of his now infinitely more famous student, Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) who is probably the most famous and highly regarded artist in the world today.

And so, here in the 20th Century American Southwest, it goes similarly with the great work of the exceptionally talented mid Century Navajo silversmith, Jack Adakai, who is one of the better kept artistic secrets of the 20th century Southwest. Adakai (active 1950’s-1981) is well-known among connoisseurs of fine traditional Navajo jewelry, but his is not a household Native American artist’s name in the sense of Charles Loloma or Kenneth Begay or his former student and apprentice and now International Navajo jewelry superstar, McKee Platero (b. 1957). Adakai lived and worked quietly as a traditional Navajo man in the pre-internet, pre-social media age in the Gallup area of far western New Mexico near the Arizona border. He worked at various times for the various prominent trading companies in the area; C.G. Wallace, Tobe Turpen, M.L. Woodard and also worked regularly with the Foutz trading family of Farmington and Shiprock, New Mexico.

Adakai’s work is characterized by its excellent and complete mastery of all traditional Navajo silversmithing techniques, such as tufa-casting, fabrication, stamp, chisel and file work and rocker-engraving and his somewhat Modernist often streamlined design sensibility. In addition to his own formidable silversmithing abilities, Adakai was also an excellent teacher and mentor in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s to his young clan nephew, the now world-renowned Navajo silversmith, McKee Platero. Jack Adakai is also the Father and teacher of the well-known and well-regarded contemporary Navajo silversmith, Ray Adakai.

This wonderful and special bracelet is a particularly fine example of Jack Adakai’s exalted capabilities as witnessed by the elaborate, artistically and technically superb work in evidence, beginning with the unique Adakai innovation of a double-thick layered silver shank, an interesting technique he invented whereby two separate cast-ingot layers of silver are fused together in the center to create an extra thick shank, the top layer of which was beautifully decorated all the way around with profuse stamp worked and repeating repousseed designs. It’s a masterful and exciting design composition with a lot of dynamic motion and visual excitement. Its uniqueness and complexity and makes for a particularly stunning and captivating visual impression, with an instant “WOW” factor.

The bracelet measures 3/4" in continuous width all the way around. The bracelet’s inner circumference end-to-end is 5 5/8" and the gap between the terminals is 15/16" for a total interior circumference of 6 9/16”, just a touch over 6 1/2". The bracelet’s silver shank is a full 3/16" in thickness all the way around. The bracelet weighs a very substantial, yet very comfortable and easily wearable 118 grams or 4 1/8 ounces, over a quarter-pound of silvery goodness and it is in completely excellent original vintage condition with some age-appropriate wear and a fine bright patina from the cast ingot-silver. The bracelet is properly signed on the interior with Jack Adakai’s customary capital letters initials "J.A." hallmark insignia.

This bracelet is an extremely attractive and most beautifully-crafted special piece made by a great artist who had he come along a generation later, in the late 20th Century media-rich hyper-connected era of The Famous Indian Artist, would have been a great deal more well-known, like his renowned former apprentice is today. But, even so at the end of the day, if this bracelet were signed “MP” instead of “JA” it would be at least three times more expensive now, but it wouldn’t be any better or more beautiful at all.

Price $3,750

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Master Navajo Silversmith Jack Adakai and His Now World Famous Former Student and Apprentice, McKee Platero

There are some very distinct similarities between Jack Adakai and McKee Platero’s work. They share a certain visual sensibility and zoning;, use of heavy, often cast-ingot silver, complex multiple deep stampworked and repeating, often diamond-shaped, repouseed horizontally-oriented design motifs, some quite similar in shape and appearance, well-defined stamp-worked borders top and bottom, and also an interesting occasional use of rocker-engraving.

The thing that is the most strikingly different between these two artist’s work, however is that Platero’s pieces are now priced at a completely different level than Adakai’s due to his Platero’s fairly recently recognized worldwide fame. The 1960’s Adakai bracelet pictured here is priced today at $3,750, the similar 2019 Platero bracelet pictured here was sold three years ago for $9,500 and today would likely be priced at around $11,500.