Navajo. Known by his hand and his mark — not by a paper trail.
Some silversmiths you know by their story. Richard Jim you know by his work. There's no gallery biography for him, no list of Indian Market ribbons — what there is, is the silver: heavy traditional Navajo cuffs and rings, signed "Richard C. Jim (Navajo)" on the back, that keep turning up on collectors' wrists and, more than once, on T.Skies' own show table. He's a working Diné hand-fabrication smith whose record lives in the metal rather than in print, and we'd rather tell you that plainly than dress up a biography we don't have.
His hallmark reads "Richard C. Jim (Navajo)" — the full name, struck into the back of a cuff or engraved inside a ring. It's a clean way to know his hand, and it's how his pieces are authenticated in the resale trade.
What the work shows is a solid command of traditional Navajo construction. Look for twisted square wire at his bezel borders — not two round wires twisted together, but a single square wire given a turn, a subtler and harder thing to do well — along with rope-wire edges, rosettes, and hand-cut bezels. His rings run to a six-shot split-shank build with a low "rodeo-wave" silhouette. He sets serious turquoise: Kingman spider-web, Royston, white buffalo. His cuffs carry real weight — 76 to 93 grams of sterling in the pieces that have come up for sale — the kind of heft that tells you the silver was worked, not stamped out thin.
This is where Richard Jim's record is richest — not on paper, but on video. His pieces have turned up across multiple T.Skies livestreams. On the Friday Statement Jewelry show you can watch a Kingman spider-web ring of his read out on air — the very piece and hallmark that put him on this directory's list. He also appears on a Thursday show with a white-buffalo four-stone necklace, and in a Cyber Monday show with a Royston ring. If you want to know his hand, that's the place to look.
Know more about Richard? Contact T.Skies.