Kenneth Begay — Father of Modern Navajo Silversmithing

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

Diné (Navajo) · 1913 – 1977 · Active 1940s to 1977

The marks

"I began marking my jewelry in 1951 or 2 using a 'KB' as my mark." That's Kenneth Begay himself, interviewed in the mid-1970s — one of the rare cases where the origin of a hallmark comes to us in the maker's own words. Hougart's reference confirms it: KB (embossed), introduced 1951 or 1952.

Before and alongside the KB, there is the shop stamp. "While I worked for the White Hogan I stamped it with a small hogan," Begay said. The White Hogan Silver hogan mark — first used in 1948 — has an open roof smoke hole and three lines crossing the building, the top line clearing the door. On Begay's work it usually appears with his KB initials and STERLING HAND MADE; tertiary marks can include Original Design in script inside a fringed square or oval plate. The same convention ran shop-wide: every White Hogan smith paired personal initials with the hogan.

Where did the hogan stamp come from? Hougart says it was "reportedly acquired from Fred Peshlakai" — Begay's old teacher — but Hougart's own Peshlakai entry adds that no reputable evidence has surfaced that Fred ever used a hogan stamp at all. A hallmark origin story hedged twice over: enjoy it, don't bank on it.

The modernist who kept the old style

Begay started the way the old smiths did — informally, watching. "I started playing with silver when I was about twelve years old. My great-uncle worked with silver and I watched him and played with the silver when he wasn't around." The formal training came at Fort Wingate Vocational School, and his teacher there was Fred Peshlakai — son of the household of Slender Maker of Silver. Students began on copper, filing and chiseling, cut their own steel dies, and only graduated to silver when ready. "Fred Peshlakai taught us the old Navajo style that he learned from Slender Maker of Silver," Begay recalled. "I like that style and still work in it."

While still in school he demonstrated silversmithing at Bryce Canyon, Zion, and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, then worked for Babbitt Brothers in Flagstaff. In May 1946 came the decision that made his name: with John Bonnell and his cousin Allen Kee, he co-founded White Hogan Silver in Flagstaff — Begay and Kee its first silversmiths. The shop moved to Scottsdale in 1950 and became the flagship of the modern era, the reason Hougart calls Begay the father of modern Navajo jewelry. It was at the White Hogan bench, by his own account, that he started setting ironwood into silver: "Then everyone started using it." (Self-reported, uncorroborated in the references we checked — but nobody disputes the look he made famous: clean chiseled silver, single stones, ironwood, coral, turquoise.)

For all the modernism, his creed was traditional. "Navajos should make jewelry like Navajos and Zunis like the Zunis." He drew designs from potsherds and Navajo rugs, dreamed them at night and wrote them down, and refused treated or stabilized turquoise outright.

From 1968 he taught at Navajo Community College at Many Farms, starting his students on copper just as Peshlakai had started him. His students include Darryl Dean Begay, James Little, Boyd Tsosie, and Cheyenne Harris; his own family became a dynasty — son Harvey Begay (Arizona Indian Living Treasure, 2005), daughters Sylvia Radcliffe and Kaye Begay, granddaughter Deborah Silversmith, who still uses his old tools. Hougart's chronology adds two honors: managing the Navajo Nation's Arts and Crafts store from 1964, and the Navajo Community College post from 1968.

Slender Maker of Silver taught Fred Peshlakai; Peshlakai taught Kenneth Begay; Begay taught the generation working now. Three teachers, one line — the same line this directory keeps walking.

References

• Hougart, Bille. Native American and Southwestern Silver Hallmarks, 5th ed. (2022), Names section (Begay entries), White Hogan Silver entry, and chronology.
• Rosnek, Carl & Stacey, Joseph. Skystone and Silver: The Collector's Book of Southwest Indian Jewelry (1976), Kenneth Begay interview, pp. 114–115.
• Bedinger, Margery. Indian Silver: Navajo and Pueblo Jewelers (1973).