What Is Repoussé in Native American Jewelry?
Repoussé is a metalworking technique in which sheet silver is worked from the back with punches and hammers to push the metal forward, creating raised relief designs on the front face. The technique appears in early Navajo silversmithing and has been practiced continuously by artists who favor its sculptural quality and the directness of the hand-to-metal process.
Mateo's Field Notes
The word repoussé comes from the French "to push back," describing the fundamental gesture: the smith supports the work against a yielding substrate—pitch, leather sandbag, or a pitch bowl—and drives punches against the back of the sheet to raise the design into the front face. After raising, the work is often turned over for chasing—refining the raised surface from the front with smoothing and detail punches. The interplay between repoussé from the back and chasing from the front is what separates accomplished work from rudimentary relief; without chasing, raised designs tend to be blunt and soft-edged.
Fred Peshlakai, whose work is documented by Adair, was among the early Navajo smiths who brought European repoussé traditions—transmitted through Mexican smiths—into the Navajo silver canon. His pieces show a command of relief depth that distinguishes them from the shallower stamp-and-chase work common in the same period. The technical challenge Peshlakai mastered was controlling the metal as it moved: silver work-hardens as it is shaped, and without regular annealing to restore softness, the sheet will crack before the design is complete. Managing that annealing cycle—knowing when to stop and heat, when to continue working—is the core physical intelligence of repoussé.
Darryl Dean Begay integrates repoussé into compositions that also employ stampwork and sometimes overlay, treating the raised relief as one element in a complex surface rather than the sole technique. Louise Roanhorse's repoussé work occupies a different register—quieter compositions where the relief itself carries the entire visual argument without supporting techniques.
Hougart's documentation of hallmarks provides the attribution framework for signed repoussé work from the postwar period, when the Indian Arts and Crafts Board accelerated hallmark adoption among Navajo and Pueblo smiths.
Collector's Handbook
- Examine relief depth and edge crispness. In quality repoussé, the raised areas have genuine three-dimensional presence—not just surface texture but actual relief height. The edges between raised and flat areas should be clean and controlled, showing the effect of front-side chasing after the initial repoussé raising.
- Look for evidence of chasing. Pure repoussé without chasing produces rounded, somewhat indistinct raised forms. The addition of chasing punches from the front creates crisp edges, surface texture within the raised areas, and detail that distinguishes refined work from elementary relief.
- Check the back of the piece. Repoussé necessarily deforms the back of the sheet; the back will show corresponding indentations from the punches. A piece claimed as repoussé with a perfectly smooth, undisturbed back may be die-struck or mechanically embossed.
- Distinguish from stampwork. Stampwork uses dies pressed into the surface from the front; repoussé raises metal from the back. In stampwork, the design elements sink into the metal plane; in repoussé, they rise above it. Both can appear on the same piece, and the distinction is visible in which way the metal has moved.
Masters of Repoussé in Our Directory
Fred Peshlakai (Navajo) · Darryl Dean Begay (Navajo) · Louise Roanhorse
Primary Sources
- Adair, John. The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths. University of Oklahoma Press, 1944.
- Hougart, Mark. Hallmarks of the Southwest. Schiffer Publishing, 2000.