LASTING IMPRESSIONS

Figural design motifs give expression to Zuni inlay jewelry.

- PAULA A. BAXTER

Many interesting advances took place in Native American jewelry making during the mid-20th century. The 1950s and 1960s were a period of renewed experimentation, boosted by the replacement of the gasoline blowtorch with a more precise and safer acetylene torch and more plentiful sheet silver and wire. By the 1970s, a would-be “boom” in Indian jewelry creation produced a wider market for both conventional and innovative designs. These three decades of social change offered new opportunities for stylistic variations.

One of the most significant developments between 1950 and 1980 was the adoption of figural (animal and human) design motifs. Pre-1945 Pueblo jewelry offered surface decoration that was essentially abstract or organic-themed. Steer heads on silverwork and carved leaves, birds and fetish animals appeared in the 1920s and 1930s. Commercial Indian jewelry of that time used derivative figural designs. When carvers and jewelry makers in Zuni Pueblo began shaping figural images in earnest after 1945, their work signaled a large shift in visual depiction from earlier decades. In many ways, however, Zuni was the obvious place for innovation and changing representations.