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A magnificent and perfectly-crafted

McKee Platero Navajo cast-ingot silver

“Shield” style ring, 2018

Attention must immediately be paid here the moment you first lay eyes on this beauty, it grabs you by the eyeballs and you simply can’t look away. The great Master’s extraordinary and incomparable touch is all over every millimeter of this ring; it’s got everything that makes McKee Platero’s silver work so unbelievably and uniquely great. Start with its extremely heavy duty construction, everything made exactly as it should be, weighty and intense thick cast ingot-silver curved rectangular “Shield” face, perfectly and precisely decorated with an extraordinary display and array of perfectly-executed stampwork, file work and chisel work literally out the wazoo, no one else can do it even remotely like this and all this within a restrained and elegant, yet artistically extravagant and dynamic overall design presentation.

Superlatives really fail here, all one can really say is the one word that perfectly sums it all up and that is simply “WOW”. This guy is just on another planet good, just totally out of this world. As you can plainly see here, this piece is so precious looking, it literally glows, vibrating with an almost otherworldly beauty. The deeply stamped almost three dimensional pictorial imagery of the majestic profiled eagle’s heads atop and below a whirling center section has an extraordinary dynamism and motion. It’s like a rich and energetic miniature painting in silver.

The diamonds flanking the central design on either side add another visually exciting element, literally “stretching”

the design around the ring’s shank in a fascinating and bold manner.

The ring measures a fairly large size 12 on a standard professional graduated ring sizer. The ring’s nicely-curved face is 1 1/2" in height from top to bottom and 1" in width. The silver shank is a considerable 1/16" plus in thickness and the silver “shield” is also 1/16" in thickness. The ring weighs a very solid and serious, yet quite comfortable 28 grams or 1 ounce. The ring is properly and very beautifully signed “McKee A. Platero” and it is also dated “2018 ”

in Platero’s lovely cursive script engraved on the interior. The ring is also marked with Platero’s customary three stars in a row hallmark. The ring is in generally excellent original condition overall with a small amount of abrasion wear and a tiny nick or two in evidence, but there are no damages at all.

McKee Platero does not make a great many rings, they are fairly difficult to come by and we have had perhaps only

a dozen or so in all the 40 or so years we have been buying, selling and collecting his work (as opposed to maybe 50 bracelets) and we can say without a doubt that this ring is a particularly powerful example, one of the most intense, distinctive and satisfying Navajo silver jewelry expressions we have ever seen anywhere, from McKee Platero or anyone else for that matter.

There’s not really much more to say here except to emphasize that this is a rare opportunity to become one of the few, the fortunate and the proud to own a piece of this particular brand of greatness. This is the type of powerful and compelling piece which could very easily become your one and only go to, the one you wear every day and do not feel complete without. It could become an integral part of you, helping you to feel whole.

You will, as the Navajo people say, always “Walk in Beauty” with this one on your person.

You will be surrounded by greatness and harmony every step of the way.

SOLD

A McKee Platero bracelet from 2022 with similar eagle's head designs.