How Old Is My Native American Jewelry? The Buyer's Dating Timeline

You can estimate the age of Native American jewelry within a generation by checking it against documented transitions: ingot-worked coin silver before about 1900, turquoise appearing around 1880 and in quantity after 1890, lightweight tourist production from 1899, maker signatures only from the 1920s onward, and government tribe stamps in the late 1930s. This page gives the buyer-facing timeline; the deep construction analysis lives on its companion page.

Mateo's Field Notes

Silver stock is the first clock. Early smiths melted coins. Grey Moustache told Adair how Hubbell supplied American coins for twenty years, until "the government sent out an order telling us that we were not to melt up any more silver money [c. 1890]. From that time on Mr. Hubbell got Mexican silver for us to work." (Adair 1944, ~pp. 7–8) Frank adds that sterling came into use after 1900, and that before 1900 the preferred size and thickness of jewelry required melting several coins into an ingot, hammered into sheet. (Frank, ~pp. 12–13) Heavy ingot-worked metal reads early; thin, uniform commercial sheet reads twentieth-century. Details on the alloys: Silver Standards.

But beware the coin-silver myth. Frank is blunt: differences among U.S. coin, Mexican peso, and sterling silver "are impossible to discern by visual examination," and even a chemical finding of coin silver "is of little value for indicating age," because some smiths kept using coinage after World War II — "and the fakers use it even now." (Frank, ~pp. 12–13) Coin silver is a clue only when the whole construction agrees.

Stones are the second clock. Adair: "While turquoise was first set in silver by the Navajo about 1880, it was not until after 1890 that the stones were used in the jewelry in considerable quantities. In 1880 turquoise was scarce, for this was before the modern mines in Colorado and Nevada." (Adair 1944, ~p. 13) Frank confirms bezel-capable soldering by the 1880s, with the first sets usually small garnets. (Frank, ~p. 15) So: no stones is consistent with the earliest work; a few modest stones suggests the 1880s–1900s; fields of matched commercial-cut turquoise are a twentieth-century signature. See The First Turquoise Setting.

1899 splits the tradition. "In 1899 Herman Schweizer, who was in charge of the Fred Harvey Curio Department, conceived the idea of providing lightweight silver and turquoise jewelry for tourists," farming out precut turquoise and thin sheet silver to smiths around Thoreau, Sheep Springs, Smith Lake, and Mariano Lake. (Frank, ~p. 21) Machine-drawn wire, commercial solder, machine-rolled sheet, and the blow torch followed. But Frank warns dating by new tools alone stays fuzzy: "the transitional phase lasted until 1930," with some smiths and whole areas making "the simple, heavy, first phase jewelry thirty years after the lighter tourist-type jewelry came to dominate the commercial market." (Frank, ~p. 21) Weight and intended wearer — Native or tourist — matter as much as date.

Marks are the third clock. Hougart's front matter records that only since the 1920s did individual makers begin identifying themselves on their silver, with most remaining anonymous to consumers up to and shortly after World War II; the first systematic marking programs arrived with the institutions — the Indian Arts and Crafts Board's standards of April 1937 put numbered government dies and tribe-name stamps (Navajo, Zuni, Hopi, Rio Grande Pueblo) on qualifying silver. (Hougart 5e, front matter and ~IACB section) A genuine artist hallmark therefore suggests the 1920s at the very earliest and usually much later; no hallmark says nothing against age. See Hallmark Identification and Unsigned Jewelry.

Related Entries

The deep version: Dating Jewelry by Construction. Form-specific dating: Squash Blossom Necklaces. Eras: First Phase · Fred Harvey Era. Value: Is My Turquoise Jewelry Valuable? Era-documented pieces are at tskies.com →