Frank Patania, Sr. — Anglo Silversmith Hallmark

Name card for Frank Patania, Sr. — T.Skies Silversmith Directory

Name-card placeholder — hallmark imagery to follow.

Anglo · documented in the T.Skies hallmark library

Frank Patania, Sr. (1899–1964) was a Sicilian-American silversmith and shop owner based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is not a Native American maker; Hougart documents him alongside Native makers as a significant non-Native figure in the Southwestern silver tradition. His heritage is recorded exactly as the source states it: born in Sicily, he established a style of hand-crafted Southwestern American jewelry by blending European silversmith technology and Native American design.

Patania opened his Santa Fe-based Thunderbird Curios shop in 1927; the name was later changed to the Thunderbird Shop. The shop was the home base for a select group of talented Native American silversmiths who could hone their skills and where their products were sold. Among the Native silversmiths who worked at Patania's shops over the years were Charles Begay, Alberto Contreras, Carlos Díaz, Don Enos, Jimmy Herald, Lewis Lomay, Julian Lovato, Arturo (Arthur) and Andy Rivera. A second shop was opened in Tucson in 1937.

The shop was among the early adopters of using petrified wood in jewelry. Because of his early influence on Southwestern silver crafts, Patania has been referred to as "a William Spratling of the American Southwest." The Thunderbird Shop's logo — a thunderbird — was stamped on each product.

Frank Patania, Sr. died in 1964. The Santa Fe shop closed that year and was re-opened in 1968 by his son Frank Patania, Jr. (1932–). His grandson Samuel Frank Patania (1959–) later took over management of the Tucson-based Thunderbird Shop in 1990, renaming it Patania Sterling Silver Originals.

Heritage note: Hougart documents Frank Patania, Sr. as Anglo/non-Native — a Sicilian-American maker of Southwestern-style work. This directory records his heritage exactly as the source states it. Hougart explicitly documents non-Native makers in his hallmark record.

The mark

"FP (rocker engraved inside a diamond; earliest mark used sporadically); F P (conjoined and embossed; first used in the early 1940s) and a thunderbird stamp (the 'thunderbird' mark was first used in the late 1930s); F P (conjoined and embossed letters, inside an oval, in the 1950s); F P (conjoined; incised letters) and a thunderbird stamp; a thunderbird stamp only, with sterling (the thunderbird mark measures about 2mm, wingtip-to-wingtip)"

Multiple marks were used across different periods: early engraved FP inside a diamond; the conjoined FP used from the early 1940s; the thunderbird stamp introduced in the late 1930s; oval-framed variants in the 1950s.

References

Hougart, Bille. Native American and Southwestern Silver Hallmarks, 5th ed. Schiffer Publishing, 2022. Thunderbird Shop entry approx. p. ~32288; Frank Patania, Jr. entry approx. p. ~22817.

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