I would love your feedback on this silver belt buckle. It was among several older southwestern pieces that appeared at a local consignment shop, although I understand several of them sold before I got there!
The mark (a curvy S?) is unknown to me, and I can’t find it in any of the resources I have access to. Despite that, I took the plunge, as these pieces are rarely encountered here in Canada, and this one appealed to me. The size is 3” x 2” and the weight is 66.42g.
Photos below. I welcome your opinions, whatever they may be!
Congrats on stumbling upon a beautiful buckle in the wild, @chamekke! The softly textured underlayment is a nice touch and the symmetry of the appliqués is pleasing. The stones look awesome in the smooth bezels: I like their imperfect surface as well as the matrix, are those chunk of pyrite?
Nice looking buckle and well made too! I’ll add that it is not earlier than late 1960s due to the commercial swivel bar. To me, the style and appliqués used point to 1970s. Possibly Kingman turquoise.
@chamekke This is a super nice belt buckle and it appears to be well-crafted. I especially like the balanced design. The turquoise stones look good, too. I live in a turquoise desert also so I’m happy for you in finding this terrific buckle!
Beautiful buckle with lovely turquoise; I would most definitely wear that. Maybe you can sweet talk the owner of that shop to keep an eye open for more Native American jewelry, and give you first dibs
@Ravenscry thank you for your nice comments! I like the symmetry, too. No pyrite in the matrix that I can see, just a bit of matte light grey. I wish it were pyrite as that’d help narrow down the turquoise type.
@TAH I appreciate your narrowing down the time window based on the buckle and style/design elements. The consignment store clerk told me this was part of a group of “older” pieces they’d received, but “older” covers a lot of ground (including me ). The Kingman identification seems sound to me, too. Lovely to have a clearer sense of when/where this buckle came from. Thank you!
Thank you, @chicfarmer ! I’m looking forward to wearing this, for sure. I have a couple of other SW silver buckles but this is my first with turquoise in it, so I’m super happy.
@Patina “Turquoise desert” is the perfect term for living in an area where pieces like this are rare as hens’ teeth. I felt like I’d stumbled across turquoise dessert when I found this, haha!
@Ziacat thank you for your kind words! I’ll see about sweet talking the owner (or senior staff) about giving me a heads-up when other nice pieces come along. That’s a great idea.
The stones look awesome in the smooth bezels: I like their imperfect surface as well as the matrix, are those chunk of pyrite?
). The Kingman identification seems sound to me, too. Lovely to have a clearer sense of when/where this buckle came from. Thank you!