Hand-Wrought Ingot Work: The Old Way of Navajo Silversmithing

Hand-wrought ingot work is the oldest form of Navajo silversmithing — the process of melting coins or traded silver into a raw bar or ingot, then hammering, annealing, and shaping that ingot into jewelry entirely by hand, without the use of prefabricated sheet silver. Every early piece of Navajo silver, from the 1850s through roughly the 1920s, was made this way. The technique required a smith to control the entire material chain from melt to finished form, and the results carry a character — slightly uneven surface, the record of hammer marks, a warmth in the metal's face — that sheet-silver work does not replicate.

Mateo's Field Notes

The most vivid description of early Navajo ingot technique comes from Washington Matthews, a surgeon posted at Fort Wingate who persuaded a Navajo smith to set up his forge where Matthews could watch. His notes, published by the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1880–81, were reproduced at length by John Adair: "sandstone ingot molds, which the smiths fashioned out of rock native to the country; an anvil, made of any large suitable piece of iron — such as a bolt or a wedge — which is sunk into a log; tongs made of scrap iron; scissors of the ordinary variety, with which the smiths attempted to cut the metal; pliers, hammers, and files." (Adair 1944, ~p. 16) The photograph Adair reproduced from the Southwest Museum, taken around 1885, shows an ingot mold of sandstone resting against the anvil, files and what appears to be a cold chisel on the blanket beside the smith.

The silver came from coins. Adair documents the sequence precisely: American silver dollars, half-dollars, and quarters were melted first. About 1890, when federal authorities began enforcing laws against defacing currency, traders began importing Mexican pesos, which the smiths preferred — "being purer in silver content, the metal was softer and more easily worked." (Adair 1944, ~p. 28) The jewelry made from American coins, because of the copper content, tends toward a slightly more yellowish cast than that made from Mexican silver. This color difference is real but unreliable as a dating tool; other factors — annealing, heat during working, solder content — affect color as much as the alloy does. (Adair 1944, ~pp. 28–29)

Tom Burnsides and his brother John Burnsides are among the smiths Adair studied most closely. Adair's appendix tables "Tom Burnsides' Silver Work" and "John Burnsides' Silver Work" document their production and pawn records in detail — among the most granular economic records of silversmithing from the early twentieth century we have. (Adair 1944, Tables II and III)

Sheet silver began arriving from traders in the late 1920s. Bedinger dates the introduction with a quotation: "Sheet silver in the late 1920s (Tanner February 1960) . . . Using sheet silver saved the smiths much hard pounding, and gradually the sheets superseded slugs." (Bedinger 1973, ~p. 32) The transition was not abrupt — ingot-worked silver continued to be made by older smiths through the 1930s and 1940s — but the commercial availability of sheet silver effectively ended ingot work as the dominant method. What remained was a technique associated with the pre-sheet era, practiced by smiths trained before the supply chain changed.

In the Directory

Atsidi Sani (Diné — first documented Navajo smith) · Grey Moustache (Diné — eyewitness to the early era) · Slender Maker of Silver (Diné) · Tom Burnsides (Diné) · Kenneth Begay (Diné)

Related Entries

Kenneth Begay · Tom Burnsides · Silver Standards: Coin vs. Sterling · Die-Making and Stamps · Origins of Navajo Silversmithing