Morenci cuff with cross country connection

[quarterbunny]

Hi there!

So I found this piece during the usual late night cruise online. I have a very good eye for authentic, so I was looking for a cuff and stumbled on this! I don’t think the seller realized what they had.

It’s Ben Taylor Riggs, so all hand worked. Morenci in that stunning sky blue. Very fine birdseye, matrix of pyrite and quartz.
I love minimalist designs. The craftsmanship is superb.

The piece was commissioned by someone in Oatman Arizona. Oatman was named after a family of mormon brewsterites who were massacred after a bad encounter with the Yavapi tribe. The Oatman’s daughters and 1 son survived the incident. The daughters were taken by the Yavapi and made to do slave labor. The son immediately began a search for his sisters.
Eventually the girls were sold to the Mohave people. The Mohave treated the girls like family, adopted them, and the eldest Olive recieved a distinct blue chin tattoo marking her as a daughter. The younger sister passed from illness during that time, and she was lovingly buried. Eventually Olive was located by her brother, and agents from fort Yuma told the Mohave to hand her over or they would be destroyed. Fearing for the safety of her adoptive family, Olive left the Mohave and went to fort Yuma to be claimed.
While there, she met a man by the name of Fairchild who also had is family killed by a bad encounter with a tribe…so with this in common, they eventually got married and moved to Sherman Texas. Olive spent the rest of her life doing charity work, and always spoke in glowing loving admiration for the Mohave people. She is buried in West hill cemetery in Sherman Texas.

This cuff from Oatman Arizona, found it’s way to the same town as Olive Oatmans resting place… I thought it fitting, so I snapped it up!

[koliopee]

Wow what a journey…can you share how you learned its path? Thats amazing!

[quarterbunny]

The seller runs a small private gallery near Oatman, Ella Riggs stopped by one day and it led to a business relationship between this lady and the Riggs. She had commissioned several pieces directly from Ben Taylor Riggs for her gallery. She has begun to liquidate the collection.
I have visited Oatman Arizona many times, my dad was a huge history buff, so I was constantly exposed to history growing up, absorbing all these stories like a sponge. I also do extensive genealogy research and that often leads to walks through various cemeteries looking for names and their stories. I learned about Olive Oatman being in my local cemetery on one of these outings years ago… I took what I learned in Arizona and combined it with the local history. When I saw this piece, I automatically made the connection between the Arizona town and the history I knew… and thought… “What a coincidence… it comes from the town named after that lady’s who’s buried here family…it belongs here with me” so I bought it.

The cuff itself is a stiff heavy piece, but it fits me like a glove I honestly didn’t even check measurements before I bought it, so the fact it fits so well is another coincidence

This piece is unusual for Mr Riggs work. Most of his work is more naturalistic… mixed stones, buffalo nickles worked into the designs. This in contrast is extremely clean, sleek, and minimalist. Pictures don’t do justice to this stone. 3/4 of the stone is a very fine birdseye pattern… the other 1/4 is deep blue broken op by pyrite speckled in like shining stars blinking in the sky, and black matrix like wispy clouds.

[koliopee]

It was brought to you​:star2:

[TaraFawn75]

Looks beautiful on