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A Field Guide to Southwest Jewelry · by Mateo James

File and Chisel Work: Pre-Stamp Decoration in Early Navajo Silver

← Field Guide

File and chisel work is the earliest documented form of decorative surface treatment in Navajo silversmithing — a period before steel stamps became available when a smith drew a line, cut a groove, or engraved a pattern using the pointed end of a file, a cold chisel, or a hand-made graver. This pre-stamp era is documented in Washington Matthews' Fort Wingate account of 1880–81 and in Grey Moustache's testimony to John Adair around 1938, placing file and chisel as the default decorative toolkit of the founding generation of Navajo smiths.

Mateo's Field Notes

Matthews watched a Navajo smith at Fort Wingate in 1880–81 and left the earliest detailed record of tool use. His account, reproduced by Adair, describes files in terms that make the engraving function explicit: "they usually employ only small sizes, and the varieties they prefer are the flat, triangular, and rat-tail. Files are used not only for their legitimate purposes, as with us, but the shanks serve as punches and the points as gravers, with which figures are engraved on the silver." (Adair 1944, ~p. 16, via Matthews 1880–81) The file shank as a punch, the file tip as a graver: improvised tools extended to decorative purpose because purpose-made engraving tools were not yet available or imported.

The photographic record Adair reproduced — a photograph from the Southwest Museum taken around 1885 — shows "several files and what appears to be a cold chisel" resting on the blanket beside the smith's anvil. These were working tools, not display objects. The cold chisel, along with files, gave the pre-stamp smith the means to cut into silver surface: a chisel pressed with a hammer against silver leaves a groove; a graver drawn under light pressure traces a line. (Adair 1944, ~p. 16)

Grey Moustache's testimony to Adair around 1938 provides a human reference point. Grey Moustache learned silversmithing from Atsidi Sani himself, around 1878. What he learned in that era was file-and-chisel work and hammer-and-ingot technique — the tools of the founding generation. The transition to commercially available steel stamps, which began arriving from traders in the 1870s and expanded through the 1880s and 1890s, created the stampwork tradition that replaced file-and-chisel as the default decorative method. By Adair's fieldwork period, file-and-chisel work as primary decoration had receded into history; stamps had become the norm. (Adair 1944, pp. 3–6)

This technique is historical. No corpus entry documents a contemporary Navajo artist working primarily in file-and-chisel engraving as distinct from stampwork or other established techniques, though engraving as a mark-making method (signing work) persists and is documented in Hougart for some artists.

Collector's Handbook

  • Identifying pre-stamp surface decoration. On very early Navajo silver (pre-1880s), surface decoration may take the form of incised lines, simple groove patterns, or rudimentary figural cuts rather than the repeating stamped impressions that characterize later work. The lines will be hand-drawn, not mechanically repeated.
  • Files vs. stamps: a practical test. Stamp impressions have defined, consistent edges — the steel die transfers its exact profile each time. File-drawn lines are continuous, with varying depth depending on pressure and tool angle. Under magnification, the difference is visible in the character of the line or groove.
  • Historical period context. Pieces from before roughly 1880 that show any surface decoration at all are more likely to show file or chisel work than stampwork, simply because commercial stamps were not yet widely available. This era of jewelry is rare and its authentication requires significant provenance documentation.

In the Directory

Artists documented in the founding era who worked with file-and-chisel tools before stamps were widely available: Atsidi Sani (Diné) · Grey Moustache (Diné) · Slender Maker of Silver (Diné)

Primary Sources

  • Adair, John. The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths. University of Oklahoma Press, 1944. ~p. 16 (Matthews 1880–81 account); pp. 3–6 (Grey Moustache testimony).

Related Entries

Stampwork · Die-Making and Stamps · Hand-Wrought Ingot Work · Origins of Navajo Silversmithing