A Glittering Celebration of Native American Beauty

The colors of the Southwest are stunning enough--red rocks and sunsets and vast blue skies. Just as dramatic are the colors of the stones and other materials Native American artists have used for centuries in their jewelry--turquoise blue, jet black, coral, the shimmering white of the inside of a shell.

Saturday, a new show featuring more than 250 exquisite examples of Zuni and Navajo handiwork opens at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Griffith Park.

Called “Blue Gem, White Metal,” the show is a celebration of gifted Native Americans who alchemized stone, shell and silver into wearable works of art and other beautiful objects.

Drawing on the collection of Phoenix’s Heard Museum, the small show continues until Jan. 21. Coming at the beginning of the gift-giving season, it will leave visitors lusting after squash-blossom necklaces and cunning fetish-like sculptures that put to shame most of the made-for-tourists items sold in Santa Fe, Taos and other centers of Indian arts and crafts.

As Amy Scott, the Autry’s curator of visual arts, explains, many of the pieces in the show were collected by C.G. Wallace, a trader who first visited the Zuni Pueblo in western New Mexico in 1918. There, as Wallace wrote, he observed Zuni dancers “bedecked with inlaid shell. Its use goes back to prehistoric times.”

During Wallace’s 50 years as a trader with the Zuni, he was not only an admirer of their jewelry and other traditional arts. He also realized these arts could be a gold mine both for the Zuni and for himself. As he predicted, the artful goods would sell like crazy in a United States increasingly fascinated by the Indian way of life it had only recently all but destroyed. The riveting story of Wallace’s symbiotic relationship with indigenous artists is told in the show’s catalog, written by Heard curator Deborah Slaney, who organized the show for the Arizona museum.

“These are things that would have been pulled out of digs,” says Scott, as she points during a tour of the show to a simple but still lovely string of argillite, shale and white shell beads made in 300 A.D. by ancestors of the modern Zuni. The Zuni began working with turquoise about 1400 A.D., Scott says. A 600-year-old example in the show: a rectangular pendant made of jet, on which the stone’s shape is echoed by a rectangular ribbon of turquoise.

Coral began to appear in Indian jewelry after the arrival of the Spanish. The silver work that we so identify with the art of the Southwestern Indians came relatively late. The Zuni began working in silver in the late 19th century, after they learned the skill from a Navajo artist.

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Beginning with prehistoric work, the show, Scott says, “goes all the way up to the present day with really strong pieces by contemporary artists, some of whom will participate in our programs.” These include a panel discussion at the Autry on Jan. 14, which will feature Michael Horse, Veronica Poblano and Dan Simplicio talking about Zuni art and artists with moderator Deborah Slaney.

A few carvings of the human figure are in the show, but the best of the sculptures represent small animals. “Some of these are really charming,” says Scott, who points out that they reflect varying degrees of realism.

Some of the little figures are probably fetishes, created for religious purposes. But the Zuni artists obviously took pleasure in making these whimsical little creatures for their own sake. Especially compelling is a tiny skunk made in 1931. The body is black jet, the stripe is white shell and the eyes are tiny dots of turquoise.

Frogs are the animals of choice in a stunning necklace made in the 1930s by Leekya, considered the greatest of the Zuni jewelry makers. Chunks of turquoise have been carved into frog shapes, complete with black eyes, and fitted into a silver necklace in the popular squash-blossom style.

A visitor can’t help wondering if Leekya was aware that women across America were snatching up costume jewelry with animal motifs, even as he created his stunning variation on a traditional Indian form. Whatever the artist was thinking, the resultant necklace is a smash. It’s the signature piece of the show, Scott says.

Ever the shrewd businessman, Wallace wanted his artists to keep busy whether the requisite materials were plentiful or not. Non-Indians were increasingly hungry for turquoise and silver pieces especially, just as they are today. To make sure the jewelry kept coming, no matter what, Wallace hoarded scraps of turquoise used in larger works, keeping the bits on hand in cigar boxes. He eventually had his own turquoise mines.

One of the most interesting display cases in the show is filled, not with jewelry, but with the tools required to make it. Here are molds carved out of tufa stone--one in the shape of a crucifix--into which the artists poured molten silver. There are also aluminum cutouts--showing the silhouette of an Indian dancer, for example--within which the artists could arrange bits of stone, coral or shell in mosaic designs. As Scott observes, the outline of the finished piece might be exactly the same as another, but the mosaic itself varies with the imagination and skill of the individual artist.

Scott says she wishes she had bought more Indian jewelry when she lived in Santa Fe. But then, she notes, today’s buyers have to be concerned about authenticity when they cruise the multitude of modern shops featuring Native American objects. Wallace had no such concerns. He commissioned most of the pieces in his collection from the artists he admired most.

The Autry is at 4700 Western Heritage Way in Griffith Park, across from the L.A. Zoo. For information, call (323) 667-2000.

* Spotlight appears each Friday. Patricia Ward Biederman can be reached at [email protected].