The seller had this pair of Navajo earrings converted from screwbacks to wires.
The simplicity is what attracted me. But I’m now wondering how old they might be. Partly because the 3-D hoops and dangling ball remind me of 19th century Victorian earrings made by Anglos. I know these aren’t likely to be as old as that—that would put them as First Phase or Second Phase in NA jewelry and I doubt they’d get the Sterling stamp.
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Hello! I don’t think I will be any help regarding your earrings, but I read a lot of your previous posts before I joined the forum. I think you had a great thread on chip inlay that we have referenced on here numerous times.
Only thing I have to offer is that screw backs are earlier (which I am sure you know), but not super old. My mom had a couple pair from the mid 40’s. Yours are lovely earrings.
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Thanks for your kind words. I have learned much more about jewelry and have collected some far nicer NA jewelry than when I wrote that post. My eye got better and my career advanced and brought in a bit more money, which helped me afford better pieces.
So what I’ve learned about earrings, mostly from handling Anglo-made pieces, particularly Victorian, is that 19th century earrings will always be on wires.
Piercing the ear went out of style at some point early in the 20th century, for rather racist/chauvinistic reasons: Because immigrants were piercing their ears, many Anglos considered piercing ears an “old country” and “foreign” custom. That’s is when screwbacks came in. I’ve seen guesses for the advent of screwbacks as early as the 1920s and as late as the early 1940s.
Clips were later. Posts for pierced ears began in the early 70s (at least from what I’ve read).
But I don’t know what that earring style means in the context of NA pieces and particularly, Dineh artists working silver. My only guess is that if the screwbacks were original, it’s likely these earrings were for the tourist trade or resale, not made as family jewelry. I would imagine Dineh girls would have pierced ears.
To complicate matters further, I’ve bought Victorian earrings that originated on wires, then were converted to screwbacks, and even later, were converted back to the original wires or had posts added. So that’s a possibility for this pair, too, but I suspect a remote one: Occam’s Razor, it’s way too complicated an explanation.
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@saef Hi ~ I really like your earrings! Very nice. Though, I don’t consider them being from the Victorian era. Not to muddy things up but, I’m thinking these could be Mexican made and not necessarily Native American. The silver hanging ball ~ I really haven’t seen this feature used before in Native American earrings. Doesn’t mean it can’t be, though. The decoration on the ear wire - what is the piece sticking out the back? A post?
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the original screwback earrings before being modified
seller also stated there was a signature above the sterling stamp that was hard to read
hard to read would be an understatement
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No, I know they’re not from the Victorian era. As I said, not from First Phase or Second Phase. Definitely created many decades later. But I’m wondering if the artist may have been inspired by seeing Anglo pieces from that era.
@saef That’s an interesting and apt guess. Navajo women’s dress changed in exactly that way, at first from the forced exposure to Anglo women’s hand me downs and overall styling during the Navajo internment in the 1860s.
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Steve, thanks, good to see you again. (I remember you posting here back in the day.) Appreciate your doing image search and retrieving the seller’s original photos in the listing. I can barely see the engraving above “STERLING.” That is going to take a magnifying glass.
Welcome back, @saef; we’ve missed you! I’ve actually thought a few times in the past 7 years that you used to create great threads and it was a loss to the forum that you were no longer posting. I hope you’ll stay!
As far as your earrings, I can’t help very much in dating them, except that I wouldn’t immediately assume they are Navajo, or Native. The 3d silver ball dangling in the center of a ring is very unusual, and if it is Native made, I would expect the ball to be constructed like a handmade Navajo pearl, with a horizontal seam. The hoops themselves seem to be of hollow form construction, which kind of makes me think 60’s/70’s, though I have no source for that. I’m intrigued by @Patina’s theory that they may be Mexican, though I’m no expert on Mexican jewelry.
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I hope we get to see some pics of your newer treasures!