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An elaborately tufa-cast vintage Navajo
silver cuff bracelet with seven hand-cut turquoise stones, c. 1920’s-1930’s
this is a unique and wonderful tufa-cast silver bracelet featuring an interesting asymmetrical arrangement of seven beautiful well-matched, hand-shaped turquoise stones. The graceful and complex silver casting here displays the marvelous and desirable combination of delicacy and strength which are the hallmarks of a skillfully executed tufa-cast piece. Tufa-casting is well known to be one of the most difficult and demanding of all traditional Navajo silversmithing techniques and it requires great skill and superb control in every single step of the process, from properly carving and preparing the volcanic tufa stone mold to melting and properly pouring the molten red-hot silver.
After the cast is successfully completed, the bracelet’s silver shank is filed, shaped and buffed into its final form,
the silver bezels are soldered onto the shank and finally the turquoise stones are set. The seven hand cut, high-profile matched turquoise stones themselves are all of beautiful and varied colors, ranging from deep blue to greenish-blue with brown matrix to an interesting greenish brown-yellow. The stones are possibly from the famed Cerrillos, New Mexico turquoise mine approximately 20 miles south of Santa Fe or another possible source is the Royston Mining district in Nevada. The stones are all very nicely set in old-style plain “foldover” type silver bezels.
The deliberately asymmetrical placement of the seven hand-shaped stones is quite striking and beautiful and the
also somewhat unusual placement of a stone at the end of each of the bracelet’s terminals is also very attractive.
The bracelet measures 1 1/4" 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 5 5/8" and the gap between the terminals is 1 1/8" for a total interior circumference of 6 3/4". The bracelet weighs a very comfortable and extremely easy and comfortable to wear 58 grams or 2 1/8 ounces. The bracelet and stones are in excellent original condition and particularly so for its 90-100 years
of age. There is no damage in evidence and there is a nice amount of age-appropriate wear and a fine soft patina on display. One of the turquoise stones on the bracelet’s terminals might have a very old worn down chip on it, but this
might also be an original facet of the hand-cutting of the stone
All in all, this fine bracelet is a beautifully-crafted, strikingly distinctive and highly wearable vintage piece,
a combination of character traits that’s pretty hard to equal or beat. It could very easily become your
everyday favorite “go-to” piece.
Price $2,250
