So maybe @EatSleepTurquoise has an original. I see the second one is listed as Fred Harvey era. I wish we could see if they have the same mark as @EatSleepTurquoise’s cuff.
I will say with my recent experience involving a fake ring on another Etsy site, I’m hesitant to believe completely a number of things on Etsy. So that may be partly why I was feeling suspicious that it was old. At a quick glance this site looks way better!!
Edit: I just read the copy on the first one and it says it’s the Arrow Novelty Company; so same stamp on that one anyway.
As best I could, I meticulously compared the OP’s bracelet to the Esty bracelet. Stampwork placement and everything else looks identical. So it’s either the same bracelet or an exact copy to my unprofessional eye.
Etsy seller here. There are a lot of imports, wrongly attributed, tourist jewelry sold as “Navajo “, and other assorted things sold on Etsy. But there are also a lot of ethical sellers as well. It’s buyer be ware.
The bracelets have some surface features (irregularities, porosity, striations) which look as if they may be cast. The missing features of the whirling log patterns look as if they happened as the pieces were pulled from a mold. I don’t know that this is the case, but I strongly suspect that it is.
Right. The fluted shot looks as if it was soldered directly to the surface of the metal on the original master, with repousse relief undercuts possibly created after the fact. The castings of the fluted shot features on the flat surface of the silver definitely look like the bracelets were pulled from a mold as a unit. Nothing fundamentally wrong with making the bracelets that way, and they might even be “vintage”, but I do not believe they are individually handmade, and are probably misrepresented with regard to method of manufacture and origin.
ETA: The seller appears to have some very nice jewelry for sale, so if there is a mistake, I’d be inclined to believe it’s an honest error, rather than intentional misrepresentation.
I think there are a lot of “twirling log” reproductions out there. And people are buying them because they want to fit in with a certain demographic here in the US.
!!
I will be fair, as a hater of this imagery, to note that (and it’s been discussed on this forum as well) there is a significant push to re-legitimize the image among NA dealers and collectors, ostensibly on world-history grounds but, let’s be real, clearly in part for economic reasons, to protect the value of vintage goods. Obviously this is separate from current production and its intentions.
There was a lengthy article in Native American Art magazine about it not long ago, and I found the author amazingly eager to dispense with the twentieth century post mid-1930s. And wrote the editor to push back against this flagrant denialism. He was gracious but woudn’t publish a letter to the editor.
I think you have to be cautious about assuming the intentions about any past owner of a swastika/whirling log piece.
there are sellers now adding them to vintage pieces in attempt to add value or age to an otherwise nondescript piece, or to draw in buyers with a certain political or ethical mindset these days. be especially aware of this for any material coming out of the US.
for the same reason, there are people making very convincing reproductions of older swastika/whirling log (or any native work) pieces and selling them to unsuspecting buyers, who then go in to sell them to others as legitimate pieces. once they enter the market in that way, it can become impossible for most buyers to distinguish genuine from fake.
as an newer collector, these can all be landmines to decipher on your own! welcome to the forum.
@mmrogers There have been several discussions. I was curious about it this morning too, so I took a close-up photo. To my eyes, it doesn’t look like it fell off during casting, it looks like it has traces of being rubbed by someone tho. what do you think?
This is a very interesting topic. I saved five of these Fred Harvey style cuffs from being scrapped and I didn’t know what they were at the time. Now I’m wondering if they are reproductions. One did have a whirling log, which was why the jeweler was gonna scrap the whole lot.
Looking closely at the bracelets again, the whirling log motif is the only area where I’m seeing any significant variation in these bracelets, so it does look like either a problem with the mold in that particular area, or someone melted or scraped part of the design off the wax prior to investing and casting. There are other areas where I see flaws in the mold expressed in exactly the same place on both bracelets (note the area on the right hand side of the upper bracelet just below the fluted bead repousse feature where a clean right triangle of material is missing, and there is a pronounced mold line running longitudinally through the center just below the right triangular flaw). It looks like the lower bracelet is flipped around exactly opposite and if you look very closely you can see the exact same right triangular area missing just below the fluted bead repousse features on the opposite side of the lower bracelet.
They definitely appear to be mirror images. My whirling log cuff wasn’t as detailed as this one. I gave most of them. They only charged me $30 a piece. This is the one I kept.
It’s dark here and my lighting it’s bad. I hope these work.
