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The best McKee Platero Navajo bracelet ever made, 1992

ex: Teal McKibben Collection, Santa Fe

Of course, this is just our own personal opinions after our nearly 40 years of buying McKee Platero bracelets

as often and as many as we possibly could, but, ultimately, of course, you will judge for yourself.

We’ll start this presentation with a nice little anecdote from 2002, the year after we purchased this bracelet after nearly ten years of waiting patiently for the promised opportunity to do so from its original owner, McKee Platero’s former Santa Fe Gallery dealer, one of the world’s greatest Native American jewelry authorities and our dear old friend, the late Teal McKibben (1928-2006) of La Bodega Gallery on Canyon Road. We were wearing the bracelet on

a driving trip through the Navajo Nation one summer day and we stopped for lunch at the Navajo Nation Inn restaurant in the Navajo capital of Window Rock. When the older Navajo waitress first came over to our table to greet us and take our order she noticed the bracelet right away and made the following remark:

“Ohh, that’s a good old one!”

We knew exactly what she meant; a bold, large-scale, traditionally-styled Navajo bracelet made with thick, heavy silver and a rich abundance of big, beautiful blue turquoise stones. On closer examination of this bracelet, however, one can clearly observe the uniquely Modernist edgy aspects and special design embellishments McKee Platero always imparts to even his most traditional designs; the intense angularity, the unique hand-cut shapes and always interesting presentation of the stones, the almost unbelievably precise, over the top technical virtuosity of all aspects of the silverwork. When we explained to our waitress that actually the bracelet had been made just some ten years earlier by a then 45 year-old Navajo silversmith named McKee Platero (b.1957) who lived only 25 or so miles away as the crow flies, from where we were then sitting in Window Rock she just couldn’t believe it. Not long after this, when we next saw McKee Platero we told him this story and he smiled a very satisfied smile.

Now on to the bracelet itself. The first immediate impression is that it is massive, yet supremely graceful, completely harmonious, and built to last forever like a proverbial brick shithouse, excuse our florid language. Structurally, the bracelet is constructed of a very thick, heavy split-silver shank, a full 3/16" in thickness, upon which are mounted no less than eleven separate silver bezel platforms each holding a beautifully hand-cut clear blue Sleeping Beauty, Arizona mine turquoise stone. Mckee Platero has always insisted upon doing all of his own lapidary stone work and the results are always uniquely distinctive and striking to see.

These eleven turquoise stones are all beautifully matched and they range in size from 1 1/4" by 3/4" for the largest center stone down to 5/16" by 1/4" for the four smallest faceted rectangular stones. The stones vary interestingly in shape and profile from rectangular and high domed in the largest center stone to large lower profile ovals flanking the  center stone on either side to the smaller, somewhat unexpectedly and finely multi-faceted horizontally-oriented rectangular for the remaining eight smaller stones. All of the eleven stones are perfectly

and precisely set in old-style “fold-over” type heavy silver bezels. There are four small applied silver “raindrops” around each of the two oval turquoise stones and a border of four larger silver “raindrops” at either end of

the panel of turquoise stones.

The three largest silver bezels and their large stones are each bordered by beautifully-executed, finely-twisted

thick silver wire surrounds. A few brief words about the two beautiful matching stampworked decorative motifs on

the bracelet's end terminals, they are like precisely executed miniature renditions of a traditional Navajo bowguard or "Ketoh" design perfectly bordering and accenuating the bracelet's central grouping of turquoise stones. Taken all together, the bracelet is basically an artfully arranged massive and massively beautiful “wall” of beautifully

glowing turquoise framed in superbly executed silverwork.

Over the past 23 years time, the bracelet’s silver surfaces outside and primarily inside have become fairly tarnished or oxidized and the natural darkening of the silver has heightened the dazzling blue color of the turquoise stones even more. The silver could certainly be polished and the accumulated oxidization removed, if desired, but we never have and we see no particular reason to ever do it so we will leave that decision to the bracelet’s lucky next owner.

“Platero comes from a family of silversmiths, his grandfather and his uncles were known for their heavy silver jewellery with deep and precise stampwork, and Platero continues this tradition.”

-The British Museum

But in the past decade and a half, McKee's bracelets have dramatically changed gears stylistically; he is now making almost exclusively large-scale, medium to quite wide all-silver cuff bracelets with complex patterns of stampworked and repouseed decorations. When he has used set stones lately, they have mostly been very small accent type stones, generally small round occasional settings of turquoise, jet or coral. It's somewhat akin to the very considerable stylistic difference between the so-called "Blue Period" and "Rose Period" of the great Modern artist Pablo Picasso's paintings; a very different but each completley artistically accomplished and valid stylistic manner done during different periods of the artists' life.

This unique and remarkable bracelet has only changed hands twice privately since it was made over 33 years ago

in 1992. It first went personally from McKee Platero to Teal McKibben in that year and then it went personally from Teal to us in 2001. It has never been publicly available for sale until right now and it may never be again.

Consider carefully how often in life you have ever had the very rare opportunity to acquire the very finest work

of a very outstanding artist? Well, that unusual, significant and fleeting moment is upon you now.

SOLD

PROVENANCE

________

The Artist, 1992

Teal McKibben Collection, Santa Fe, NM, 1992-2001

Fine Arts of the Southwest, Santa Fe, NM, 2001-Present

The bracelet measures 1 1/2" in width at its widest center point and it tapers down to 3/4" in width at the beautifully stampworked silver terminal ends. The bracelet’s inner circumference end-to-end is 6 1/16" and the (non-adjustable) gap between the terminals is 1" for a total interior circumference of 7 1/16" The bracelet weighs a seriously substantial 140 grams or 4 7/8 ounces, well over a quarter pound of sensational silver beauty. The bracelet is in excellent original condition overall with the previously mentioned substantial degree of original oxidization to the silver shank. The bracelet is most properly signed with McKee Platero’s characteristic three-dots in a row signature on the inside of the shank and it is also marked “MP” on the interior center in the artist’s capital letters initials, the very occasional use of which is indicative of his having singled this bracelet out and marked it in this personalized manner as being a particularly special and significant piece to him when he made it. The bracelet has a very solid, smooth and extremely satisfying "feel" on the wrist, comfortable in a way that suggests it has always been there.

It is important to point out that this bracelet is a very different type of McKee Platero bracelet presentation than what he has been making in the past ten to fifteen years or so. In this much earlier time period of the 1990's, Platero's bracelets were much more lapidary intensive with numerous uses of multiple set stones and shells often in unique, complex and unusual varieties and different combinations of textures, shapes and colors. Also, the bracelets themselves ranged widely and largely in size, width and general configuration, from very thin bangles or very narrow cuffs to various types of row-style bracelets, medium and large split-chisel cuffs such as this piece and other types.