Meet
jewelry designers of the West whose
creative works set the trends
By Sophia
Dembling
Photography by Michael Neese
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Western and Native American jewelry designers draw on strong traditions in their work, but as artists they also push for creative expression, extending the boundaries of traditional style with varieties of metals and stones and inspiration drawn from the world around them and other arts.
Out of many hundreds of fine jewelers working in the West today, we chose a few of the best to profile. Their highly original work sets trends rather than copies them. From elegant pieces using gold and gemstones to simpler silver creations, their jewelry covers a wide range of tastes and prices.
Danny Romero, Jesse Monongye, Michael Horse, and Dylan Poblano create jewelry influenced by their Native American backgrounds. Douglas Magnus, Susan Adams, and Catherine Maziere work in the historic Southwest silversmithing tradition. Jewelry is a personal statement and a fashion statement, but for the premier artists, it transcends both. The trend starts here.
Susan Adams
Richmond, Virginia
Silversmith Susan Adams loves West-ern movies. "I love old John Wayne movies just to look at the gear," she says. "I look at lots of books, and when I go to cowboy antiques shows, I look at the clothes. I look at the spurs." These influences all leave a mark on her classy, kitschy silver buckles, pins, bracelets, and earrings.
Adams learned to make real spurs in Idaho a couple of years ago. Applying that skill, she developed her silver spurs bracelets and necklaces.
Adams' line of pins and belt buckles depicting trick-riding cowgirls may be ahead of a trend. "I'm intrigued with the cowgirl spirit," she says. "Cowgirls are a major thing for me right now." As the new National Cowgirl Hall of Fame and Museum in Fort Worth gains momentum, others may soon be riding that same passion.
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Although Adams has been making jewelry for 25 years, her Western line is only about two years old, and she is bursting with ideas and plans for expanding the line. Adams has been making concha scarf slides and belts and been thinking about rings like the heel band of a spur, earrings shaped like bits, adding stones to her designs, and maybe crafting real spurs.
Michael Horse
Los Angeles
Zuni artist Michael Horse finds inspiration in the artists and techniques of the past, such as the work of influential Zuni fetish carver Leekya Deyuse, who died in 1966 but left a legacy of inspiration in his stone and shell
carvings.
"I looked at his carvings and took a modern view of them," Horse says, by further simplifying the already simple forms in his current jewelry work. "I also look at a lot of things that are native but not Southwestern, such as Kiowa and Comanche silver work, old Peyote jewelry work. I am doing a lot of those images of peyote birds, fans, drums, rattles. A lot of the Kiowa and Comanche pins were done in nickel back in the 1920s. I'm doing them in sterling and gold."
What attracts Horse to the work of the past is "a certain amount of honesty and purity. A lot of the older stuff wasn't made to be marketed. It was made for family, gifts, ceremonies."
Douglas Magnus
Santa Fe
Self-taught craftsman and artist Douglas Magnus has noticed a lull in the trend of Western belt buckles and belt sets, his core business, in recent years. But in the meantime, he has been pursuing his passion for creating turquoise jewelry inspired by the stones themselves.
"I own turquoise mines, so I have a very deep interest in creating beautiful jewelry using this special gemstone," he says. These stones tell Magnus to go for gold. "The materials scream for gold because it's just too valuable to put in silver," he says, pointing out that the familiar combination of silver and turquoise has been a tradition for only about 150 years. "On a worldwide basis, gold and turquoise have been used since Egyptian times."
Magnus aims for timeless, trendless designs, "somewhat in the Victorian era of jewelry in Europe, not over-elaborate. I draw on design elements that have classic, universal appeal, such as symmetrical geometric shapes. Occasionally I will throw in an odd angle on a stone, or I may do something completely free-form. I like to let the turquoise speak."
Danny Romero
Ilfeld, New Mexico
Painter John Nieto launched Yacqui artist Danny Romero in a new direction
when he asked him to create an inlay version of one of his portraits.
Now Romero is exploring the idea of portraiture in jewelry, using for
inspiration his artwork and the work of others. "I like E.S. Curtis
photographs," he says, referring to the turn-of-the-century photographer
and ethnographer who documented more than 80 Native American tribes. "I
go through magazines I've done of drawings. I paint."
From these sources, Romero produces detailed portraits in stones. "Lapis
will be the dark color, yellow will be where the light is hitting it.
Or reds with the lapis color, or even black. Pipestone out of Minnesota,
which is a pottery kind of color, can be shading, then pinks can be the
highlights."
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Santa Fe
Silversmith Catherine Maziere's brooches of New Mexico churches have grown so popular, she now casts rather than handcrafts them to keep up with demand. But when left to follow her most personal whims, Maziere's inspirations are more surprising: poets, composers, and painters. "Rilke," she says. "He uses all these images, like Emily Dickinson. Sometimes I even dream of it at night. It's a very powerful thing for me." Maziere creates portrait pin-pendants of these and other inspirational artists, and she lets artists' images creep into her work, such as a piece she created of a woman on a pedestal with a clock face, inspired by Salvador Dali.
Maziere is currently dreaming up a set of rings inspired by personal literary heroes, including Dickinson. Maziere also wants to interpret Dante's heaven and hell in jewelry. "I get inspired in different places," she explains.
Jesse Monongye
Scottsdale
Many artists spend the year attending shows and events where they can showcase their work and gain followers. Navajo artist Jesse Monongye needs only two to give him a year's worth of orders—Indian Market in Santa Fe and the Heard Museum Fair. "Those are the only two shows I do," he says.
Although well-known for high-end work in inlaid gold, Monongye is now trying to keep costs down by mixing silver and gold. "My bread-and-butter people are those that can pay about $6,000 for a piece," he says. "I can make those hard-working people some of the nicest jewelry."
Monongye is inspired by the natural world and puts the beauty of the Earth into his elaborate inlays, creating scenic paintings of mountain and sky on buckles, bolos, necklaces, and pocketwatches.
When Monongye dreams, it's of wildly elaborate pieces, such as a concha belt decorated with Monument Valley themes. "I don't know if there's a customer out there for it," he says. "It would be a quarter of a million dollars."
Dylan Poblano
Zuni, New Mexico
Dylan Poblano learned traditional Zuni inlay techniques from his mother, Veronica Poblano, but he now draws on techno-culture to produce chic and very contemporary jewelry. "I don't consider myself to be a traditionalist. I'm more a modernist," Poblano says.
Among Poblano's inspirations are fashion designers. "Versace, above all," he says. "And Gaultier. I like his wit and the unusual combinations he does." Poblano's work is sculptural, with geometric motifs worked from unusual stones, including the vivid blues and greens of gem silica and Orville Jack, ghostly glowing labrodite, and rainbow moonstone. "These are really vibrant colors that you wouldn't think were natural." And Poblano has been inlaying into crystal. "It's hard to work with," he says. "But it's really cool."
While he draws from Zuni traditions, Poblano also is pushing beyond. "All artists should challenge their creative side," Poblano says.
Sophia Dembling is a Texas writer who covets the jewelry in this story.
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