Navajo Arts and Crafts Guild — Southwest Jewelry Guild & Marks

Name-card placeholder — historic shop-mark imagery to follow. © Turquoise Skies Inc.

Tribal cooperative / guild · Fort Wingate, then Window Rock · organized September 1941 · Southwest Jewelry Guide

Overview

The Navajo Arts and Crafts Guild was officially organized in September 1941 at Fort Wingate, New Mexico. Adair traces its nucleus to the 1939–40 school year, when the Educational Division of Navajo Service set up a craft project at Wingate Vocational High School known as the Wingate Guild, directed by Ambrose Roanhorse, "formerly teacher of silversmithing at the Santa Fé Indian School." Its purpose, Adair writes, was "to afford employment for the fine craftsmen who had learned their art at the Indian schools," and later "to increase the tribal income from the sale of arts and crafts by the promotion of fine handicrafts."

In 1942 the Guild started a cooperative facility at Pine Springs, Arizona, with other facilities at Window Rock, Toadlena and Shiprock. Per Hougart, Ambrose Roanhorse, Chester Yellowhair and Fred Peshlakai helped the Guild provide a base from which students graduating from the Indian School silversmith classes could practice their newly acquired skills in the marketplace. Hougart's hallmark-history chapter also records John Adair interceding with the Indian Arts and Crafts Board for funds for Roanhorse to hire Chester Yellowhair, Tom Burnside and Peter Roans.

The Guild made an effort to stamp all silver produced under its aegis, and in 1955 began urging its members to use a hallmark. In 1964 artist Carl Gorman was appointed director. In 1972 the Guild evolved into the Navajo Arts and Crafts Enterprise (NACE) and relocated to Window Rock, Arizona; the organization is wholly owned by the Navajo Nation.

The Guild mark

"The Navajo horned moon symbol shown below [is] the registered trademark of the Guild." — Hougart, Bille. Native American and Southwestern Silver Hallmarks, 5th ed. (2022), history chapter, p. ~18. [OCR-degraded line; symbol identification verbatim]

Artists connected to the Guild

See the directory entries for Ambrose Roanhorse (founding director of the Wingate Guild nucleus), Chester Yellowhair, Fred Peshlakai and Tom Burnsides.

References

• Adair, John. The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths. University of Oklahoma Press, 1944. "The Navajo Arts and Crafts Guild."
• Hougart, Bille. Native American and Southwestern Silver Hallmarks, 5th ed. Schiffer Publishing, 2022. History chapter, p. ~18.