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Two exceptional Hopi silver overlay cuff bracelets by Michael Kabotie (Lomawywesa),1980’s
Michael Kabotie (1942-2009) was one of the most talented and original Hopi artists and silversmiths in history and these two bracelets done in the 1980’s show the stunning virtuosity of an extraordinary artist, an unexcelled master of his craft. The “triple-overlay” process of making silver overlay jewelry, which Michael Kabotie pioneered, allows his designs to have even greater depth and relief than traditional Hopi silver overlay in which one sheet of silver is sandwiched above another after designs are cut out of the top sheet and the bottom sheet has been oxidized black. Michael took this idea a significant major step further, first by the incredible intricacy and complexity of his overlaid designs and then by adding decorative stampwork, chisel work, etching and shading to areas on the polished top layer of silver and the secondary oxidized layer to provide a greater sense of depth, dimensionality and relief to the pieces.
These results are beautifully achieved in these two bracelets. The designs themselves are stylized depictions of symbols drawn from ancient Hopi ceremonial kiva murals discovered by archaeologists from Harvard University's Peabody Museum in the 1930’s assisted significantly by Michael Kabotie's Father, Fred Kabotie, in the now-ruined prehistoric Hopi villages of Awatovi and Kawaiika-a. These fantastic murals are some of the most magnificent ancient artworks ever discovered anywhere in the world and they were reproduced and interpreted and exhibited in a series of important artistic projects that Michael’s distinguished Father, the brilliant Hopi painter and co-founder of the Hopi Arts and Crafts Guild, Fred Kabotie (1900-1986), participated in or directed in the 1930’s.
At left, "Mrs. Roosevelt and Fred Kabotie, Hopi painter," standing in front of an Awatovi Kiva Mural reproduction by Fred Kabotie at the Museum of Modern Art, New York exhibition, "Indian Art of the United States", 1941. At center, Michael Kabotie wearing one of the silver pendant/panels of his "Silver Room of Awatovi" 2001 sculpture seen at right on the display in The American Museum of Natural History's 2004-2005 "Totems to Turquoise" exhibition.
Left photo source and © The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. IN123.62. Photograph by Albert Fenn. Center and right
photo source and © "Totems to Turquoise", American Museum of Natural History, Harry Abrams, New York, 2003, pp. 176-177.
At left, The San Francisco Peaks as seen from the Hopi mesas. At right, a detail of a 2001 Michael Kabotie Hopi mural study drawing depicting The San Francisco Peaks outside Flagstaff, Arizona as being the legendary ancestral home of the Hopi Kachina spirit beings.
Left photo source and © Sacred Land
The breathtaking beauty of this ancient indigenous Hopi art brought suddenly to light made an indelible impression on the young Michael Kabotie who subsequently adopted, refined and continuously stylized these designs as the primary motifs in his paintings and jewelry, which are in and of themselves modern day artistic expressions, if you will, of ancient, ancestral Hopi knowledge and symbolism, as was beautifully stated by Michael Kabotie in the quotation below.
“We the Hopi have a lot to offer from a spiritual standpoint and as a living force. We are hoping that from the presentation of our traditions and from the interpretation of the Hopi way in our art and paintings a new direction can come for American spirituality.”
-Michael Kabotie
We were personal friends and colleagues of Michael Kabotie’s for many years and we have handled a considerable amount of his wonderful jewelry over the past 40 or so years. In our opinions, these bracelets are some of the finest examples of his work that we have seen. It is a rare privilege and pleasure to be in the presence of such beautiful and fully-realized works of art as the next fortunate owners of these pieces will very quickly discover. Michael Kabotie’s Hopi name with which he always signed his jewelry and paintings was “Lomawywesa” which means “Walking in Harmony”. You will most certainly do that whenever you are wearing one of these bracelets.
The details of these bracelets are described below:
Michael Kabotie Hopi Silver Overlay Bracelet with Turquoise Stone, 1986
This bracelet features a beautiful teardrop-shaped bright sky blue turquoise stone with a dark grey spiderweb matrix, very possibly from Nevada’s famed Number 8 turquoise mine, the stone is set in a finely serrated silver bezel in a somewhat offset manner extending outwards from a deep v-shaped notch in the bracelet's beautifully detailed and somewhat asymmetrically shaped silver shank.
The turquoise stone has several natural matrix declivities, a couple of which may look like chip damage, but they are not as seen in the close-up photo above. The bracelet measures a sizeable 2” in width at its widest point and tapers down to 1 1/8" in width at the terminal ends. The inner circumference end-to-end is 5 3/8” and the gap between the terminals is 1 3/16” for a total interior circumference of 6 9/16”. The turquoise stone itself measures 7/8" in length and is 1/2" in width at its widest point. The bracelet weighs an extremely comfortable and easy to wear 81 grams or
2 7/8 ounces. The bracelet is in excellent plus original condition with a very small amount of age appropriate wear
and it is properly signed “Lomawywesa” in the artist’s characteristic cursive signature and dated and copyright
marked “86” for 1986 on the interior.
Price available upon request
Michael Kabotie Hopi Silver Overlay Bracelet, c. 1980's
This bracelet is done in all silver and has a fascinating design of a very highly-detailed central overlay panel
flanked on either side by lightly chsiel-decorated and brightly polished silver panels. The bracelet measures 1 7/16" in continuous width along the entire length of its silver shank. The inner circumference end-to-end is 5” and the gap between the terminals is 1 3/16" for a total interior circumference of 6 3/16". The bracelet's double layer overlayed silver shank has a maximum thickness of 1/8". The bracelet weighs an extremely comfortable and easy to wear 89 grams or 3 1/8 ounces.
The bracelet is properly signed “Lomawywesa” in the artist’s characteristic cursive signature. This bracelet is not dated, but stylistically it appears to have been made in the 1980’s, in our opinion. The bracelet is in generally excellent original condition overall. It has a couple of very small ripples and indents on its top and bottom edges some of which might be original tooling marks made by the artist. There is also a slight 1/4" or so dent near the bottom edge as seen in the photos above and several light scratches which could probably be buffed out if desired, but in the context of this being a 40 or so year old piece of precious jewelry, it looks pretty great. Interestingly,
this bracelet was published in "Hopi Gold, Hopi Silver" by Zena Pearlstone, Schiffer Publishing, 2014, pp. 135.
Price available upon request
