Yummy brooch @Stracci! Always wonderful to see these pieces with known history in your family. I so wish my family had history with NA art and culture; well, maybe not…I’d now have even much more in my collection😄. I also appreciate the graphic about changes in the closure pin. More good information to help age vintage items!
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I’ve only seen it extremely rarely with Navajo jewelry. Different creative dynamics perhaps. Pettit Point items are very specific and non-flexible in terms of design and layout, made to template requiring backplate in a specific size and shape. With Navajo Jewelry, one works with the size of the material available as is, and modifies the pattern and design to fit the canvas.
What I do notice about @Stracci ‘s brooch is thickness of the backplate. The backplate on the brooch if fairly thick, probably 22 - 24 gauge. As the years progressed, with downward pressure on prices and increasing materials cost, you see lighter and lighter backplate being used on Zuni items. Most items of this type now are made with 28 gauge and even 30 gauge backplate which is considerably lighter.
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Mike, your historical knowledge from being in the thick of it for so long and knowing the people you did is really something worth recording for posterity. Once the seasoned professionals are gone most of real history goes with them. You might want to consider it. Bucket list item?
While performing environmental assessments I interviewed many of the oldest local residents for site history. That’s where I learned real history; a 90 year old woman that worked on the railroad during the depression, carried a 38 revolver, and would give the hobos butter sandwiches because they were hungry; a 110 year old granddaughter of a civil war vet that recalled her grandmother was angry when her grandfather re-enlisted. He brought back a melodeon for her as a peace offering.
And my own grandmother recalled making scrambled eggs for Theodore Roosevelt when he came to go hunting (he liked milk on his scrambled eggs). I found this out when she made them for me like that. I turned my nose up and she proceeded to tell me that was the way TR liked them and that was that.
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I started pretty young, @StevesTrail, learning old school Navajo style silversmithing at 18 as a mostly broke college student. Drinking age in AZ was 18 at that time, and I also worked as a bartender at some of the college hangouts around U of A in Tucson, my home at the time.
When I got to Gallup at 19, I landed a job tending bar at the ‘Talk of the Town’ where I served drinks to, and got to know most of the traders, business people, uranium miners, cowboys, smooth operators, and outright con men operating in and around Gallup and the industry. The boss was running a gambling operation with the sheriff out of the bar, but that’s a story for another time
Once I started making Jewelry, I loved it, and really never saw myself working in another industry
(although I have, and currently also work as a gunsmith). Like everything else in life, one thing always leads to another, and I’ve been privileged to work in a business I love, and have met and known some real characters along the way.
Happy to share some of that experience with my friends here!
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Nice story. How did your brother get into the same business. Did he follow your path?
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Yes he did, @nanc9354. I had gone to work as a silversmith for a trading company adjacent to Thunderbird supply, and they hired Jim as well. Both of us worked in production which is where he learned the trade.
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Post edited by author. No longer relevant.
How about seasoned professional? And I made the correction so as not to offend.
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Appreciate it, Steve!
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@Stracci, this brooch is so beautiful. Everything about it is lovely - the silver work, the changing color of the stones, all of it. And thank you for sharing the picture of your grandmother-in-law. How special that you know it was hers! I love stories with jewelry. I’m wondering how old the photo is; that would help you in figuring out the age of the brooch. I know we have a bunch of family photos that look like that from the early '60s (maybe even late '50s), mostly before I was born (I used to tease my brother that his childhood photos were in black and white, and mine were mostly in color 
). I am very sure your grandmother-in-law would be proud of your jewelry making talent! Thank you for this post.
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Thanks @Ziacat !
The photo might date to the early 60s.
We have a bunch of family photos like these with the wavy borders. Some have “1958” stamped on the back. But this one isn’t marked, so I can’t say for sure about the date.
She was born in 1900, and had 8 children.
Her first name was Damacia.
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