Charles Loloma — Hopi Artist Who Remade Indian Jewelry

Name-card placeholder — hallmark imagery to follow. © Turquoise Skies Inc.

Hopi (Badger Clan) · Hotevilla, Third Mesa · 1921 – 1991 · Active 1949–1991

The marks

A genuine Loloma is signed LOLOMA — stylized letters built up from multiple chisel strikes, eleven of them, cut directly into the silver or gold. On some early cast work he used an engraver instead of chisels. Gold pieces carry a separate documented Loloma 14K mark. Hougart's reference also illustrates two Loloma marks on pottery — a reminder that he signed clay before he ever signed metal.

Collector's caution — this is the one that gets faked. Hougart documents not one but three distinct fake Loloma marks, each illustrated with a photograph (credited to Arland Ben and Bree Madory). That's the centerpiece of any Loloma authentication: the counterfeits are real, cataloged, and in circulation. It's an old problem — Loloma saw it in his own lifetime, telling a visitor: "People always imitate my stuff. I'll show you anything you want to know but if you really want to do something you'll have to do something distinct that people can recognize." Hougart, citing Hait (1979), puts the stakes plainly: "More than any Indian artist, Loloma's pieces qualify as investments." Where the money goes, the fakes follow. If a piece matters, compare the chisel-struck signature against Hougart's documented examples — genuine and fake — before you pay for the name.

The potter who remade Indian jewelry

Charles Loloma came to metal late, and sideways. He was a ceramicist first — a Hotevilla-born artist who painted murals for the 1939 San Francisco Exposition under René d'Harnoncourt of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, then studied ceramics at Alfred University in New York.

Even the question of when his jewelry began is honestly unsettled. Loloma himself guessed 1947, at Alfred: "I am not versed in the exact date that I started working in jewelry, but my guess is it was in 1947… I was working in pottery and silver." Wright says he became interested in silverwork in 1950, at Shungopavi, teaching under a Whitney Foundation Fellowship — and Wright's hallmark table says 1955. Hougart says about 1956. The likeliest reading: exploratory silver alongside pottery from the late 1940s, and serious jewelry production by the mid-1950s in Scottsdale, where he had opened a ceramics shop in the Kiva Craft Center in 1954 and, in his own words, "started doing more jewelry than pottery."

His training path is the telling detail. The signature Hopi overlay style was developed in 1938 by Paul Saufkie and Fred Kabotie and carried forward by the Guild after the war — but Loloma's line doesn't run through it. Wright records him seeking "the advice and criticism of Fred Sharp, Bob Winston, and Morris Robinson" in Phoenix; Hougart adds that Fred Skaggs, an Anglo modernist who reached Scottsdale in 1956, taught him silversmithing. At first he did only cast work — tufa and wax casting, where the undercuts his designs demanded destroy the mold on every pour, making one-of-a-kind pieces a fact of physics as much as choice.

Then he broke the material rules. In the late 1950s, per Bedinger, Loloma began using gold and precious stones in Indian jewelry — the first, with Preston Monongye, Eddie Beyuka, Kenneth Begay and the Plateros following. Later came exotic woods and fossilized ivory: ironwood, rosewood, lapis, coral, abalone, fire opal, diamond — one buckle rendered "a view of the Hopi mesas with turquoise buildings and an ivory sky." From 1968 to 1969, Eveli Sabatie worked in his studio and influenced the high stone-to-stone channel inlay that became his best-known signature — stones rising off the metal at differing heights. And in 1972, Wright records an innovation entirely his own: mosaic lining the inside of a gold bracelet, worn against the wrist, seen by no one but the wearer.

He kept the work anchored at Hopi. "Hold one of my pieces up to a kachina doll," he said, "and they will fit together very well." And: "This is the primary reason I live up here at Hopi — to be involved with the ceremonial happenings that are our background." After heading the Plastic Arts Department at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe (1962–64 per Wright; "three years" by his own count), he built a home at Hotevilla and worked from the mesas — no agent, no exclusive dealer; dealers paid full retail and waited.

The shop became a school. His nieces Verma Nequatewa and Sherian Honhongva assisted with stonework for decades; when his health failed, much of the shop's output was theirs. From 1972–73 they marked show pieces SONWAI — Hopi for "beauty" — incorporating in 1989 and splitting the mark in 1993 (Hougart says 1991; Wright's later, more specific account is the better bet). His sister Ramona Loloma Poleyma apprenticed in the late 1970s; a nephew, Bernard Dallasvuyama, started with him before working alone. Documented students include Larry Golsh, Chester Kahn, W. Mason Sr., and Pete Sierra. Wright's verdict stands as the cleanest placement: with Monongye, Loloma "set an example of 'new Indian' or 'new Hopi' jewelry that freed younger smiths from the strictures of a traditional craft while still remaining inherently Hopi."

He put it more simply: "I consider myself an artist and I am Charles Loloma."

References

Hougart, Bille. Native American and Southwestern Silver Hallmarks, 5th ed. (2022), Loloma, Sabatie, Nequatewa, Honhongva, Poleyma, and Skaggs entries; fake-mark plates.
Wright, Barton. Hopi Silver, Loloma narrative and hallmark tables.
Rosnek, Carl & Stacey, Joseph. Skystone and Silver: The Collector's Book of Southwest Indian Jewelry (1976), Loloma first-person interview and photo captions.
Bedinger, Margery. Indian Silver: Navajo and Pueblo Jewelers (1973).