New Mexico Turquoise & Jewelry Books: A Collector's Authority Guide

By Josh Eldred · New Mexico Literacy Project · May 13, 2026 · ~7,200 words

Last verified May 2026 · Original research by Josh Eldred

The Cerrillos Hills turquoise mines, twenty-five miles southwest of Santa Fe, are the oldest turquoise mines in North America. Pre-Columbian miners extracted the sky-blue stone from these hills for at least two thousand years before European contact. Turquoise from the Cerrillos district moved along trade routes to Chaco Canyon, to the Mogollon and Hohokam communities, and south into Mesoamerica. By the time John Adair arrived in the Southwest in the late 1930s to interview Navajo and Pueblo silversmiths for his doctoral research, that pre-Columbian turquoise-mining tradition had been joined by a silversmithing tradition barely eighty years old — and the two together had generated a commercial jewelry market that was already reshaping the reservation economy and the Fred Harvey Company's gift-shop empire alike. Adair's 1944 book, The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths, is the foundational text for the collector who wants to understand what they are reading about and who wrote it first. This guide covers the full scholarly literature, from Adair through the contemporary turquoise-mining and lapidary references, and situates it within the three institutional anchors — the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, the Heard Museum in Phoenix, and the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe — that frame the field's documentary infrastructure.

The jewelry literature divides roughly into three parallel streams that overlap without fully merging: the ethnographic-and-historical stream documenting the origins and tribal-tradition specifics of Navajo, Zuni, Santo Domingo/Kewa, and Hopi jewelry; the commercial-and-collecting stream documenting the Fred Harvey Company market, trading-post culture, the 1970s Indian jewelry boom, and the authentication-versus-fake problem; and the turquoise-mining-and-gemological stream documenting the geological and mining history of the stone itself. Most of the key collector books draw on all three, but their emphases differ, and a serious collector's library should include representatives from each.

The Stone: Turquoise Mining in New Mexico

New Mexico Turquoise & Jewelry Books reference books are highly collectible, with early identification guides and smithing studies commanding premium prices. Turquoise is a hydrous phosphate of copper and aluminum (CuAl⊂6;(PO⊂4;)⊂4;(OH)⊂8; · 4H⊂2;O, hardness 5-6 on the Mohs scale) that forms in arid regions through the percolation of copper-bearing groundwater through aluminum-rich host rock. The color ranges from sky blue (high copper, minimal iron) through blue-green and green (increasing iron content) to yellowish-green; the characteristic black, brown, or yellow veining in the matrix is limonite or iron oxide from the host rock. New Mexico's three principal historical mining districts — the Cerrillos Hills southwest of Santa Fe, the Burro Mountains near Silver City in Grant County, and the Hachita district near the Mexican border in Hidalgo County — each produce turquoise with distinct character.

Cerrillos turquoise is the historically and archaeologically most significant. Archaeological surveys of the Cerrillos Hills have documented pre-Columbian mining pits, stone mauls, grooved hammerstones, and worked turquoise debris across a production area that represents several square miles of ancient activity. The Tiffany Mine at Cerrillos, named for the New York jeweler who briefly held commercial rights in the 1890s, was the largest single operation; nearby workings include the Azure Mine and the Castilian Mine. Trace-element analysis of turquoise ornaments from Chaco Canyon's great house sites — Pueblo Bonito, Chetro Ketl, and others — has identified Cerrillos as the primary source for the Chacoan turquoise trade, which represented one of the most concentrated accumulations of worked turquoise in the pre-Columbian record (hundreds of thousands of turquoise beads and pendants have been recovered from Chaco sites). Commercial mining at Cerrillos continued sporadically through the early twentieth century; the Cerrillos Hills State Park now protects the historic mining landscape.

Burro Mountains turquoise (Grant County NM) includes the Azure Mine — not the same Azure as at Cerrillos — and several associated workings. The Burro Mountains turquoise tends toward a blue-green color with variable matrix. Hachita district turquoise (Hidalgo County NM) is a smaller and less historically significant production than either Cerrillos or the Burro Mountains but contributed to regional trade. The largest New Mexico production of the commercial period (late nineteenth through mid-twentieth century) was at Cerrillos, but Nevada turquoise mines — Lone Mountain, Royston, Lander Blue (Lander Blue turquoise is among the most prized for its hard matrix and spider-web patterning), Number Eight Mine, and Sleeping Beauty (Globe Arizona, technically Arizona but marketed through the Nevada commercial network) — dominated twentieth-century commercial production. Arizona's Bisbee turquoise (from the Copper Queen Mine at Bisbee in Cochise County) is a collector category unto itself: deep blue with distinctive dark matrix, hard, and among the most prized natural-color turquoise in the market.

The primary collector references for turquoise geology and mining are Joseph Lowry's Turquoise Unearthed: An American History (Rio Nuevo Publishers, Tucson, 2002) and Joe Dan Lowry and Joe P. Lowry's Turquoise: The World Story of a Fascinating Gemstone (Gibbs Smith, Layton Utah, 2010). The Lowry family books treat the mining history district by district, cover both North American and international turquoise sources (Nishapur Iran, Sinai Egypt, Tibetan sources), and include the geological fundamentals accessible to a non-specialist reader. The 2002 Turquoise Unearthed Rio Nuevo first edition is the Tier 2 collector target; the 2010 Gibbs Smith World Story is the more comprehensive reference for the full international scope. Supplement with Tibet D. Ward, Turquoise: The Gem of the Centuries (Gem Guides Book Company, Mentone California, 1975, first edition) for the earlier commercial-period mining documentation, and with Museum of Indian Arts and Culture exhibition catalogs for the New Mexico-specific archaeological and pre-contact record.

The First Silversmith: Navajo Silverwork Origins

The Navajo silversmithing tradition did not exist before the mid-nineteenth century. This is the foundational historical fact that distinguishes the scholarly literature from the mythologized marketing language that surrounds the commercial jewelry market. John Adair's fieldwork in the late 1930s, drawing on testimony from elderly Navajos who had direct or second-hand knowledge of the tradition's origins, produced the core oral-historical record.

Atsidi Sani (Old Smith, also known as Herrero Delgadito or Thin Blacksmith) is identified in Adair's fieldwork testimony as the first Navajo to learn silversmithing from a Mexican metalworker. The dating in Adair's sources places this acquisition of skill at approximately 1853-1868, with Adair's own analysis favoring the late 1850s to early 1860s. Atsidi Sani learned from a Mexican platero named Nakai Tsosi (Thin Mexican) in a contact zone between Navajo territory and the northern New Mexico Hispano settlements; the smith tradition he learned was the broader Mexican silversmithing tradition that itself derived from Spanish Colonial metalworking practices. Atsidi Sani subsequently taught the craft to his sons and to other Navajos; Adair traces the genealogy of transmission through several generations in his 1944 study.

The early Navajo silversmithing relied on American silver coins as raw material — dimes, quarters, half-dollars, and silver dollars were melted and cold-worked. The coin-silver tradition produced the characteristic first-period aesthetic: relatively simple forms — the concho belt (flat oval or round discs pierced in the center for a leather belt, stamped with geometric die-work), the squash-blossom necklace (a string of hollow cast or hammered silver beads with pendant naja forms, the naja a crescent shape probably derived from Spanish and Moorish horse-bridle decoration), the bow-guard or ketoh (a wide leather wristguard with an applied silver plate, functional archery equipment) — with decoration produced by steel die stamps of Atsidi Sani's and his students' own manufacture. The die-work tradition is one of the diagnostic elements distinguishing first-period and classic-period Navajo silver from later commercial work, and Adair devotes substantial attention to die-making technique and the genealogy of specific stamp designs.

The integration of turquoise into Navajo silverwork is a secondary development, generally dated to the 1880s-1890s, after the silversmithing tradition was already a generation established. The first-period silver-without-turquoise pieces are historically important and command premium prices in the collector market; the subsequent integration of turquoise as bezel-set cabochons in the silver forms became the defining aesthetic of classic Navajo jewelry in the tourist-market period. The Bosque Redondo internment (1864-1868), which relocated the Navajo Nation to the Bosque Redondo reservation at Fort Sumner NM, temporarily interrupted silversmithing; the Navajo return to their homeland after the Long Walk and the signing of the 1868 treaty reestablished the craft and enabled its spread across the post-1868 reservation.

Period One: The Foundational Literature, 1944-1976

John Adair, The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1944) is the beginning and remains indispensable. Adair was a student of Ruth Benedict and Franz Boas at Columbia; he conducted his field research in the summers of 1938, 1939, and 1940, supplemented by a Wenner-Gren Foundation fellowship, interviewing silversmiths at Navajo chapter houses and at Zuni and Hopi Pueblos. The book is ethnographic rather than commercial: Adair is interested in how the craft was learned and transmitted, what social role silversmiths occupied in Navajo society, how the Zuni tradition differed from the Navajo, and how the tourist-market demand had already begun to alter both. The documentation of specific tools and techniques — the bellows design, the crucible, the steel dies, the soldering process — is detailed enough to serve as a technical manual. The appendices include comparative silversmith inventories and production-rate data. The bibliography, while now dated, remains the best guide to the pre-1944 literature on the subject.

Points of issue for the 1944 first edition: The OU Press Norman first is bound in blue-green or teal cloth with front-board stamping (the title and a silver-and-turquoise design, both stamped in silver-color ink), the University of Oklahoma Press Norman imprint on the spine, and a printed paper dust jacket. The jacket, where it survives, shows blue and rust-orange color illustrations of Navajo jewelry forms; a complete bright jacket adds meaningful premium. The book is 257 pages plus 24 full-page photograph plates on glossy paper, bound separately from the text gathering. The text paper, wartime economy stock, tends toward browning; fine, bright text paper is rare. Ex-library copies (which constitute the bulk of the surviving low-grade population) typically have pocket and stamps at front and rear, institutional spine labels, and worn boards; fine non-library copies with an intact jacket are the real trophy.

Margery Bedinger, Indian Silver: Navajo and Pueblo Jewelers (University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1973) is the other foundational book-length ethnographic treatment. Bedinger drew on both fieldwork and archival sources — including trader records, missionary journals, government agent reports, and trader-post day books — to extend the historical documentation of Navajo silversmithing back through the nineteenth century and to provide a more detailed treatment of the inter-tribal trading relationships (particularly the Navajo-Zuni relationship) than Adair had offered. The 1973 UNM Press first hardcover with dust jacket is the Tier 2 collector target; the subsequent paperback reprints are working references. Bedinger's bibliography substantially updates Adair's for the 1944-1973 literature. Signed copies are uncommon but attainable — Bedinger participated in the Albuquerque and Santa Fe book event circuit in the 1970s.

Carl Rosnek and Joseph Stacey, Skystone and Silver: The Collector's Book of Southwest Indian Jewelry (Prentice-Hall, 1976) is the first book explicitly addressed to the collecting market rather than to scholarly or ethnographic audiences. Published at the peak of the 1970s Indian jewelry boom, Skystone and Silver covers the physical characteristics of natural versus treated turquoise, provides a district-by-district guide to turquoise sources, surveys the major jewelry forms across Navajo, Zuni, Hopi, and Pueblo traditions, and discusses the authentication problem at length. The book's direct engagement with the collector market (including price guidance, which dates quickly but is historically interesting) distinguishes it from the Adair and Bedinger treatments. The 1976 Prentice-Hall first is the Tier 2 collector target; later printings are working references. The authentication chapters remain relevant as a period document of the boom era's fake-detection anxiety.

Zuni: Lapidary, Channel Inlay, and C.G. Wallace

Zuni Pueblo jewelry is aesthetically and technically distinct from Navajo work, and the scholarship documenting it is correspondingly specialized. The Zuni lapidary tradition — cutting, grinding, and polishing stone for inlay and mosaic work — is older than the silversmithing tradition; pre-contact Zuni mosaic work in turquoise, shell, and jet is documented in archaeological contexts across the Zuni cultural area. The integration of the older lapidary tradition with the introduced silversmithing technique (which Zuni artisans learned from Navajo smiths, particularly in the contact period documented by Adair) produced the distinctive Zuni aesthetic: stone as the primary visual element, silver as the structural setting.

The channel inlay technique — cutting and setting multiple stones flush within raised silver channels to form mosaic compositions without visible gaps between stones — is the most technically demanding Zuni form. A channel-inlay piece requires the lapidary to cut each stone individually to fit its specific cell in the design; the result is a flat, flush, multi-color composition in which the silver is largely invisible and the stone surface dominates. The traditional natural materials for channel inlay are turquoise (blue or blue-green), red branch coral, jet (glossy black), and white shell (typically pen shell or glycymeris shell); contemporary Zuni inlay also uses spiny oyster (orange-red), gaspeite (green), and other stones. Petit point (small oval or pear-shaped turquoise settings in dense clusters) and needlepoint (very small elongated pointed-oval settings) are lighter-weight and faster-production Zuni forms that served the tourist and commercial market.

Charles Garrett Wallace (C.G. Wallace, 1899-1993) was the trader at Zuni Pueblo from approximately 1918 to the early 1950s. He is the central commercial figure in the development of the modern Zuni jewelry market — acting simultaneously as employer, buyer, design commissioner, material supplier, and institutional patron. Wallace encouraged and financed the development of the most technically ambitious Zuni channel inlay work; he maintained long-term relationships with the most skilled Zuni lapidaries and silversmiths; and he assembled what became one of the most important private collections of historic Zuni material culture. The Wallace collection — eventually acquired by the Heard Museum in Phoenix — includes ceremonial objects, Zuni-made and trader-era jewelry, and documentary photographs and records that constitute the primary reference for the early commercial period. Dealer Tobe Turpen of Albuquerque also assembled a significant Zuni and trading-post collection; the Turpen collection materials circulated through the Albuquerque and Santa Fe dealer network for decades.

The Zuni-specific scholarly literature includes contributions from the Heard Museum publications series and from the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology. Frank Hamilton Cushing (1857-1900), the Smithsonian ethnologist who lived at Zuni Pueblo from 1879 to 1884 as a full tribal member (adopting Zuni dress, language, and social position in a participant-observation methodology that was both ethnographically pioneering and deeply controversial), produced the foundational Zuni ethnographic documentation: his field reports to the Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnology, published in the Bureau's Annual Reports, include early observations of Zuni craft traditions including lapidary work. Cushing's major published works — Zuni Folk Tales (1901, posthumous), Zuni Breadstuff (1884-1885 serial, reprinted 1974), and Outlines of Zuni Creation Myths (BAE 13th Annual Report 1896) — are primarily concerned with ceremonial and mythological material rather than jewelry, but his fieldwork documentation of pre-commercial Zuni material culture (including the 1882-1884 Hemenway Expedition material) provides the baseline against which the commercial-period changes can be measured.

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Santo Domingo Heishi and Hopi Overlay

The Santo Domingo Pueblo (Kewa Pueblo) heishi tradition is distinct from both the Navajo silverwork and Zuni lapidary traditions in its emphasis on hand-ground disc beads made from shell, turquoise, jet, and coral rather than on metalworking. The word heishi (from the Keresan language spoken at Santo Domingo) refers to the disc or tubular bead form; traditional heishi production requires grinding a raw shell, turquoise, or jet blank to shape, drilling it by hand with a pump drill, stringing multiples on a cord, and grinding the strung beads to uniform diameter on a flat grinding stone. The result is a strand of disc beads typically 1-3 millimeters in diameter, with a smooth matte surface and consistent spacing.

Santo Domingo heishi necklaces appear in the earliest historic and archaeological contexts of the Rio Grande Pueblo area; this is almost certainly the oldest continuous jewelry tradition in New Mexico. The production is household-based rather than workshop-based, with families maintaining heishi-making as a multigenerational economic activity. The Santo Domingo Feast Day and the annual Albuquerque Indian Market are primary venues for contemporary Santo Domingo heishi commerce. The scholarly literature on Santo Domingo heishi is thinner than on Navajo or Zuni work; the most accessible treatment is within broader Pueblo arts surveys such as Alfonso Ortiz's edited volume New Perspectives on the Pueblos (UNM Press 1972) and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture survey catalogs.

The Hopi overlay silverwork tradition is the most recent of the four major Southwestern jewelry traditions and the most thoroughly institutional in origin. The technique — cutting a design from a top sheet of silver, soldering it over a plain base sheet of sterling, oxidizing the recessed background areas black with liver-of-sulfur, and polishing the raised design to a bright contrast against the matte black background — was developed in the 1940s through a collaboration between the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff (particularly under the directorship of Harold Colton and the staff curator Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton) and Hopi artisans. The Hopi Silvercraft Cooperative Guild was formally established in 1947; its founding membership included several veterans who had received vocational training through the GI Bill and returned to the reservation seeking economically viable craft production. The Guild's production standards — sterling silver required, the overlay technique required, each piece hallmarked with the maker's individual hallmark — established authentication norms that the Hopi overlay literature subsequently documents as a model for the field. The Museum of Northern Arizona (Flagstaff, not Santa Fe) publications are the primary institutional reference for the Hopi overlay tradition.

Period Two: The Commercial Literature and the 1970s Boom, 1977-1995

Oscar Branson, Indian Jewelry Making (Treasure Chest Publications, Tucson, 1977) addresses the technical side of Navajo and Pueblo silversmithing and lapidary work from the perspective of an enthusiast-maker rather than an ethnographer. Branson's two volumes (Volume 1: Silversmithing; Volume 2: Turquoise and Lapidary Work) provide step-by-step instruction in the techniques of stamp-work silversmithing, fabricating settings and bezels, and cutting and polishing turquoise and coral. The book was an outgrowth of the 1970s Indian jewelry boom: as consumer demand for authentic Indian jewelry exceeded supply, a secondary market for Indian-style jewelry made by non-Indian artisans developed, and Branson's instructional books served both populations. The 1977 first edition is the Tier 2-3 collector target; the technical documentation of tools, stamps, and fabrication technique is historically useful as a period document of the boom era's craft revival. Branson also produced Turquoise: The Gem of the Southwest (Treasure Chest Publications 1975), a shorter survey of turquoise mines and characteristics, which is the complementary Tier 3 reference.

The 1970s Indian jewelry boom is a significant collector-market event in its own right. The confluence of factors that produced it — the 1968-1975 American Indian political and cultural revival (the founding of the American Indian Movement, the 1969 Occupation of Alcatraz, the 1970 Navajo Tribal Code revisions authorizing reservation economic development), growing Anglo-American interest in Native arts as authenticity markers in the broader 1970s back-to-the-earth cultural shift, the involvement of major American department stores and New York galleries in Indian jewelry retailing, and aggressive pricing by dealers recognizing the cultural-status value of authentic Indian jewelry — drove prices for Navajo, Zuni, and Hopi jewelry to levels that had not previously existed and created the faking-and-misrepresentation problem that the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 was designed to address. The value of authenticated first-period Navajo concho belts and classic Zuni channel-inlay pieces spiked dramatically; the dealer literature from the 1970s documents both the boom-era pricing and the authentication anxiety that accompanied it.

Dexter Cirillo, Southwestern Indian Jewelry (Abbeville Press, New York, 1992) is the single most useful comprehensive collector reference covering all four major Southwestern jewelry traditions — Navajo, Zuni, Hopi overlay, and Santo Domingo heishi. Abbeville Press was the premier American publisher of oversized art-and-craft reference books in the late 1980s-1990s, and the Cirillo volume benefits from Abbeville's production standards: large format, exceptional color photography, strong bibliography, and sustained comparative analysis across the four traditions. Cirillo addresses the historical origins of each tradition, the key stylistic periods (first-period, classic, tourist-period, contemporary), the authentication problem, and the market structure. The 1992 Abbeville Press first hardcover in fine condition with dust jacket is the Tier 2 collector target; the book is well-represented in the dealer market at moderate prices.

Jerry Jacka, the Phoenix-based commercial photographer who specialized in Southwestern Indian arts, produced several significant photograph-led books that bridge the ethnographic and commercial literatures. Turquoise Treasures: The Splendor of Southwest Indian Art (with Spencer Gill, Graphic Arts Center Publishing, Portland, 1975) documents historic and contemporary pieces in high-quality color photography with brief contextual text; the 1975 first edition is the Tier 1-2 collector target for the pure visual-reference function. Jacka's subsequent Beyond Tradition: Contemporary Indian Art and Its Evolution (Northland Publishing 1988), done with Lois Essary Jacka, extends the visual survey to contemporary makers.

Lois Essary Jacka, Enduring Traditions: Art of the Navajo (Northland Publishing, Flagstaff, 1994), is the primary photographic reference for the full range of Navajo arts including jewelry, with a specific focus on the Navajo aesthetic as a continuous cultural expression rather than as commercial production. The 1994 Northland Publishing first is the Tier 2-3 collector target.

The Fred Harvey Company and Trading-Post Culture

No understanding of the commercial Indian jewelry market is complete without a thorough engagement with the Fred Harvey Company and its Indian Department. Fred Harvey (1835-1901) contracted with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in 1876 to operate trackside restaurants; by his death in 1901 the Harvey House system was the dominant hospitality network across the Southwest, with restaurants, hotels, and newsstands at major railway stops from Kansas City through Albuquerque and Lamy to Los Angeles. The Alvarado Hotel in downtown Albuquerque (1902, demolished 1970) was the Harvey Company's flagship New Mexico property and the principal venue for the Indian Department's commercial activities in New Mexico.

Herman Schweizer (1871-1943), Harvey's head buyer for Indian goods from 1901 until his death, was the operational genius behind the Indian Department. Schweizer traveled extensively through the Southwest purchasing historic Navajo, Zuni, Hopi, and Pueblo pieces directly from families and traders; he commissioned contemporary pieces to Harvey specifications; and he assembled the extraordinary collection of Southwestern Indian material culture that eventually became the core of the Heard Museum's collection in Phoenix. Schweizer's correspondence and purchase records, preserved at the Heard Museum and at the Smithsonian's National Anthropological Archives, constitute a primary source archive for the first-generation commercial jewelry market. The Harvey Company's purchasing specifications — lighter-weight pieces accessible to tourist budgets, consistent quality standards, the Harvey trademark guaranteeing authenticity to a traveling public that had no independent authentication expertise — substantially shaped Navajo and Zuni production for the tourist market.

The definitive scholarly treatment is Kathleen L. Howard and Diana F. Pardue, Inventing the Southwest: The Fred Harvey Company and Native American Art (Heard Museum / Northland Publishing, Flagstaff, 1996 first edition). The book covers the full arc of the Harvey Indian Department from its 1902 founding through its 1963 wind-down, uses the Schweizer correspondence and purchase records extensively, and provides the first rigorous scholarly analysis of how Harvey's commercial specifications altered the forms and aesthetic standards of Southwestern Indian jewelry. The Heard Museum's Harvey House collection is the subject of its own catalog publications; the 1996 Inventing the Southwest Howard-Pardue is the collector standard. The companion exhibition catalog The Great Southwest of the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railway, edited by Marta Weigle and Barbara Babcock (Heard Museum 1996), expands the scope to the full Harvey-Railway tourism infrastructure.

Trading-post culture is the broader commercial context of which the Harvey Company represents only the most visible corner. Across the Navajo Nation and the surrounding Pueblo region, licensed trading posts operated on the reservation as the primary economic link between the Navajo and external markets from approximately 1870 through the mid-twentieth century. The trader extended credit against future wool and livestock sales, accepted pawned jewelry as collateral (the pawn system), purchased finished jewelry for resale through urban wholesale networks, and frequently influenced design by communicating market-preference information to Navajo and Zuni artisans. The Hubbell Trading Post at Ganado, Arizona — founded by Juan Lorenzo Hubbell (1853-1930) in 1878, now a National Historic Site operated by the National Park Service — is the most documented trading post in the Southwest, and the Hubbell family correspondence and account books (housed in the University of Arizona Special Collections) are a primary source archive for the commercial-period jewelry trade. The Hubbell post is primarily documented in the Navajo weaving literature (Hubbell was the most influential trader shaping Navajo rug design), but the jewelry documentation in the same correspondence provides important context. Barbara Babcock and Nancy Parezo's Daughters of the Desert: Women Anthropologists and the Native American Southwest (University of New Mexico Press 1988) touches the trader world in the anthropologist-trader overlap at several points.

Period Three: Contemporary Scholarship and the Mark Bahti Series, 1995-Present

Mark Bahti, Tucson-based dealer (heir to the Tom Bahti Indian Arts legacy, Tom Bahti being the respected mid-century Tucson dealer and author of Southwestern Indian Arts and Crafts 1966) and independent scholar, has produced the most important contemporary documentation of individual Southwestern Indian jewelers. The Silver + Stone: Profiles of American Indian Jewelers series — multiple volumes published under various imprints in the 1990s-2000s — provides individual profiles of working Navajo, Zuni, Hopi, and Pueblo jewelry artists, with biographical information, technique documentation, and high-quality photography of representative pieces. The Bahti series is the primary contemporary collector reference for identifying and attributing signed and hallmarked work by specific living or recently deceased artists. Individual volumes in the Silver + Stone series are Tier 2-3 targets depending on whether they are signed by both Bahti and the featured artists; signed multi-signature copies trade premium. Mark Bahti's Pueblo Stories and Storytellers (Treasure Chest Books 1988, expanded edition Rio Nuevo 2010) extends his engagement with Pueblo material culture into the figurative pottery tradition.

Joseph Lowry, Turquoise Unearthed: An American History (Rio Nuevo Publishers, Tucson, 2002) is the accessible popular history of North American turquoise mining from pre-Columbian extraction through the twentieth-century commercial period, written for a general reader with collector interest. Lowry covers the Cerrillos mines, the Nevada and Arizona major production districts, the geological fundamentals, and the commercial-market structure (natural turquoise versus stabilized versus treated) with clarity and appropriate detail. The 2002 Rio Nuevo Publishers first edition is the Tier 2 collector target; signed copies by Lowry are attainable (Rio Nuevo maintained a robust Tucson signing circuit). The companion volume, Joe Dan Lowry and Joe P. Lowry, Turquoise: The World Story of a Fascinating Gemstone (Gibbs Smith, Layton Utah, 2010), expands to the international scope including Iranian, Tibetan, Egyptian, and Chinese turquoise, and is the more comprehensive reference for the full world turquoise trade. The two Lowry books together constitute the standard collector turquoise library.

The Barton Wright and Heard Museum publication program produced a series of exhibition catalogs and reference monographs that are collectively significant for the collector. Barton Wright (1920-2010), longtime curator and later curator emeritus at the Museum of Northern Arizona, authored or co-authored multiple foundational reference works including Hopi Material Culture (Northland Press / Heard Museum 1979) and Hopi kachina doll catalogs that overlap the jewelry literature at the Hopi overlay connection. The Heard Museum's publication catalog from the 1970s-2000s includes multiple key Indian jewelry reference texts produced in conjunction with permanent collection installations and special exhibitions. The Heard Museum Indian Fair and Market annual exhibition catalogs, published since the Market's founding in 1958, are collector ephemera analogous to the Santa Fe Spanish Market annual catalogs in the santero literature — scarce for early years, accessible from the 1980s forward, and important for documenting prize winners and featured artists year by year.

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Three Institutional Anchors

Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC) (Santa Fe NM, on Museum Hill at 710 Camino Lejo, opened 1987) is the principal New Mexico museum for Southwestern Indian art and culture, with the most important jewelry study collection in New Mexico. The MIAC permanent collection spans prehistoric through contemporary Southwestern Indian material culture; the jewelry holdings include pre-contact turquoise ornaments from Chaco Canyon and other archaeological contexts (the most important pre-contact turquoise collection in the state), historic Navajo concho belts and squash-blossom necklaces, Zuni channel-inlay and petit-point work, and contemporary pieces. MIAC publication program catalogs — particularly the Chaco Canyon turquoise documentation and the historic-jewelry surveys — are essential collector references for the New Mexico-specific record. The Laboratory of Anthropology, which shares the Museum Hill campus with MIAC, holds the primary archaeological collections and publication program for New Mexico prehistoric and historic turquoise.

Heard Museum (Phoenix AZ, 2301 N. Central Avenue, founded 1929) is the premier Southwestern Indian arts museum, holding the most comprehensive jewelry collections in the Southwest — including the Fred Harvey Company/Herman Schweizer collection (the foundational commercial-period documentation), the C.G. Wallace collection of Zuni material culture (the primary Zuni-trader documentation), and the Barry Goldwater collection (United States Senator from Arizona and longtime collector of Southwestern Indian arts). The Heard publication program — the Howard-Pardue Inventing the Southwest 1996, the Weigle-Babcock Great Southwest 1996, and multiple individual exhibition catalogs — is the most comprehensive institutional publication program in the field. The Heard Museum's authentication education resources are the best museum-based reference for the Indian Arts and Crafts Act compliance question. The Heard Indian Fair and Market (held annually since 1958, the oldest juried Indian arts market in Arizona) produces annual catalogs analogous to the Santa Fe Spanish Market record.

Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian (Santa Fe NM, 704 Camino Lejo, founded 1937 as the House of Navajo Religion) was founded by Boston philanthropist Mary Cabot Wheelwright (1878-1958) and Navajo singer (ceremonial practitioner) Hastiin Klah (1867-1937). The founding mission was to preserve Navajo ceremonial knowledge — Klah sang (recorded) his complete ceremonial repertoire for the Wheelwright archive, and the museum's Case Trading Post is among the most respected Southwestern Indian art galleries in Santa Fe. Wheelwright Museum publications on Navajo ceremonial and material culture include jewelry documentation in the context of broader Navajo spiritual and aesthetic traditions; the Wheelwright publication catalog, while smaller than MIAC's or the Heard's, provides important documentation of the Navajo-tradition perspective that the commercial literature sometimes flattens. The Wheelwright's collection of Navajo textiles, silverwork, and ceremonial material is particularly strong in classic-period pieces with documented Navajo provenance — the institutional preference for materials acquired through Navajo community relationships rather than through commercial dealer channels is reflected in the collection character.

Authentication: Natural, Stabilized, Treated, and Fake

The turquoise-authentication problem is distinct from but related to the Indian-jewelry-authentication problem, and the collector literature addresses both. The physical-material authentication issues in turquoise are: (1) natural-color versus stabilized (natural turquoise impregnated with clear epoxy resin under pressure to harden soft or porous material and improve color stability; stabilized turquoise is genuine turquoise but is considered less valuable than natural-color hard turquoise); (2) natural versus treated (turquoise treated with wax, oil, or epoxy to enhance color, without the pressure-impregnation that characterizes stabilization; treated turquoise is considered misrepresented if sold as natural); (3) natural turquoise versus simulants (howlite dyed blue, magnesite dyed blue, various plastic and glass simulations). The Mohs hardness test (natural turquoise is 5-6; howlite and magnesite are both 3-3.5, noticeably softer), refractive index measurement, and specific gravity analysis can distinguish genuine turquoise from simulants in most cases; the stabilized-versus-natural distinction is more difficult and requires gemological testing equipment.

The Indian-jewelry-authenticity problem — distinguishing Indian-made from non-Indian-made pieces misrepresented as Indian — is addressed by the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 at the federal level and by the Indian Arts and Crafts Board's enforcement program. The collector literature addresses authentication through several approaches: hallmark documentation (the Hopi Silvercraft Guild's mandatory-hallmark requirement established in 1947 is the model; many individual Navajo and Zuni silversmiths registered individual hallmarks through the Southwest Indian Art Association and similar organizations), stylistic analysis (distinguishing hand-fabricated from machine-cast pieces, hand-stamp work from electroformed die-pressing), and provenance documentation (purchase receipts from established dealers with Indian Arts and Crafts Act compliance programs). The standard collector reference for hallmark identification is Paula A. Baxter, Southwest Silver Jewelry (Schiffer Publishing 2001, first and subsequent editions), which provides a hallmark register cross-referenced to known makers. The Santa Fe Indian Market (operated by Southwestern Association for Indian Arts since 1922) and the Heard Indian Fair and Market both maintain juried-artist databases accessible to collectors for contemporary attribution.

The book-collecting parallel to the physical-object authentication problem is the issue of distinguishing the genuine scholarly and commercial literature from the proliferation of semi-commercial and outright fraudulent Indian arts guides produced during and after the 1970s boom. Several book series marketed as collector guides during the 1970s-1980s were produced by non-specialist authors with limited access to primary scholarship; their identification guidance, price data, and attribution methodology are unreliable. The Adair, Bedinger, Cirillo, and Howard-Pardue titles, and the Heard Museum and MIAC institutional publications, are the reliable references; regional trade paperbacks and ephemeral guides should be used with corresponding caution.

Key Points of Issue: Identifying the Collector Targets

Adair, The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths, OU Press 1944 first edition. Blue-green or teal cloth boards, silver-stamped front-board design. Dust jacket: blue and rust-orange illustration, OU Press Norman imprint. 257 pages plus 24 full-page plates. Wartime paper stock browns easily; fine bright text is rare. Ex-library copies dominant in the low-grade market. The book was reprinted in 1944 (second printing, same year — nearly impossible to distinguish without a stated second printing on copyright page or other marking) and in subsequent OU Press paperback editions. The 1944 first is the artifact; later printings are working references.

Bedinger, Indian Silver, UNM Press 1973 first hardcover. Standard UNM Press academic binding, original dust jacket with photographic or illustrated design. The first hardcover with intact jacket is Tier 2; the paperback reprint editions (UNM Press has kept the book in print) are Tier 3 working references. Signed copies from the 1970s Albuquerque book circuit are attainable.

Rosnek and Stacey, Skystone and Silver, Prentice-Hall 1976. Oversized format (larger than standard trade size), substantial color-plate section. The 1976 Prentice-Hall first in fine condition with dust jacket is Tier 2; subsequent printings are Tier 3. The color plates documenting turquoise district characteristics are the book's primary collector value.

Cirillo, Southwestern Indian Jewelry, Abbeville Press 1992. Large-format Abbeville production, strong color photography, comprehensive bibliography. First hardcover with bright jacket in fine condition is Tier 2. The Abbeville production standards mean the first edition is the best-quality printing; subsequent editions are equivalent for research purposes. Signed copies are attainable from the Santa Fe-Tucson event circuit of the 1990s.

Howard and Pardue, Inventing the Southwest, Heard Museum / Northland Publishing 1996. Large-format, Heard Museum production standards, the Harvey Company photographic archives extensively reproduced. First hardcover with original dust jacket is the Tier 1-2 target; this is the rarest of the mid-tier targets in genuinely fine condition because the Heard Museum print run was modest. The museum-produced companion Great Southwest Weigle-Babcock catalog is a corresponding Tier 2 target.

Lowry, Turquoise Unearthed, Rio Nuevo 2002. Small-format hardcover with illustrated boards, no separate dust jacket on most issues. Signed copies by Lowry are attainable. The 2002 first is the Tier 2 target; the 2010 Gibbs Smith World Story is Tier 2-3 depending on condition and signing.

Three-Tier Collector Market

Tier 1 trophy (mid-three-figure to low-four-figure): Signed John Adair The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths OU Press 1944 first edition fine with dust jacket (Adair signatures are extremely rare; the book is the trophy; signed copies are functionally once-in-a-decade offerings); unsigned fine Adair 1944 first with bright intact jacket (upper Tier 2 / entry Tier 1 depending on jacket and text quality); Kathleen L. Howard and Diana F. Pardue Inventing the Southwest Heard Museum / Northland Publishing 1996 first edition fine with dust jacket (modest print run, Heard Museum institutional production, the Harvey archive color reproductions — a genuinely undervalued trophy relative to its importance); signed Jerry Jacka Turquoise Treasures 1975 first fine with dust jacket; C.G. Wallace Zuni ceremonial documentation catalogs and Heard Museum C.G. Wallace exhibition catalogs from the 1940s-1950s (scarce institutional ephemera with primary-collection documentation value).

Tier 2 collector targets (low-to-mid three-figure): Margery Bedinger Indian Silver UNM Press 1973 first hardcover with dust jacket; Carl Rosnek and Joseph Stacey Skystone and Silver Prentice-Hall 1976 first fine with dust jacket; Dexter Cirillo Southwestern Indian Jewelry Abbeville Press 1992 first fine with dust jacket; Joseph Lowry Turquoise Unearthed Rio Nuevo 2002 first signed; Mark Bahti Silver + Stone individual volumes first edition signed; Marta Weigle and Barbara Babcock The Great Southwest of the Fred Harvey Company Heard Museum 1996 first; Lois Essary Jacka Enduring Traditions: Art of the Navajo Northland 1994 first signed; Oscar Branson Indian Jewelry Making Treasure Chest 1977 first; unsigned Adair 1944 first with presentable jacket; Tibet D. Ward Turquoise: The Gem of the Centuries Gem Guides 1975 first; Paula A. Baxter Southwest Silver Jewelry Schiffer 2001 first signed.

Tier 3 working library (upper-two-figure to low-three-figure): All subsequent printings and paperback editions of Adair, Bedinger, Cirillo; Oscar Branson Turquoise: The Gem of the Southwest 1975; Barton Wright Hopi Material Culture Northland/Heard 1979; Heard Museum Indian Fair and Market annual catalogs from the 1980s-present; Museum of Indian Arts and Culture exhibition catalogs; Santa Fe Indian Market catalogs from the 1980s-present; Joe Dan Lowry and Joe P. Lowry Turquoise: The World Story of a Fascinating Gemstone Gibbs Smith 2010; Frank Hamilton Cushing Zuni Breadstuff reprint Museum of the American Indian 1974; Tom Bahti Southwestern Indian Arts and Crafts KC Publications 1966 (trade paperback format, the foundational popular guide); standard Southwestern regional guide paperbacks on Indian arts; Fred Harvey Company souvenir and price list ephemera; Wheelwright Museum annual catalog publications.

Not sure whether to sell, donate, or keep? Call or text me at 702-496-4214 — I'll walk you through it.

NMLP Intake Position

Turquoise and Indian jewelry books arrive in NMLP donation pickups regularly — from Albuquerque-area collector estates, the estates of retired traders and dealers from the trading-post era, Gallup and Farmington collector libraries where the Navajo-reservation trading-post networks concentrated, and from Santa Fe-area estates with proximity to the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture and Wheelwright Museum donor communities. The donor surface concentrates in Albuquerque (Southwest Indian Arts Foundation members, trader descendants, UNM anthropology faculty estates, Heard Museum affiliate members), in Gallup (trading-post era collector and dealer estates, Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial Association member archives — the ITICA has been the central Gallup institution since 1922), in Santa Fe (MIAC, Wheelwright, and Southwestern Association for Indian Arts-adjacent collections, Northern New Mexico gallery-owner estates), and occasionally in farmington and Bloomfield (estate materials from the Four Corners trading-post district).

NMLP routes Tier 1 trophy items through its book evaluation and resale services — signed or fine Adair 1944 firsts, the Howard-Pardue Inventing the Southwest Heard Museum 1996 in fine condition, rare institutional catalogs from the Heard or MIAC — to specialist dealers (Sherwood's Spirit of America Santa Fe, Adobe Gallery, Morning Star Gallery) or to specialist auction channels (Heritage Western Americana, Southwest Art and Auction, Skinner). Tier 2 trade firsts route through SellBooksABQ standard hand-sort. Tier 3 subsequent printings and working references — supported by donor contributions — route to APS Title I schools (Southwest Indian arts and Native American studies curriculum), UNM Children's Hospital reading program, and Little Free Library stocking.

Important note on objects (not books): NMLP does NOT accept Indian jewelry, silver pieces, turquoise stones, concho belts, squash-blossom necklaces, or other Indian arts objects in donation pickups. Those objects belong with specialist dealers, tribal cultural programs, and museums; donor inquiries about jewelry and silver objects are routed to Morning Star Gallery, Adobe Gallery, appropriate tribal cultural programs (the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department, the Pueblo of Zuni Heritage and Historic Preservation Office), or the Heard Museum accessions program. Free statewide pickup with no condition limit and no minimum quantity applies to the books only — schedule your pickup or call/text 702-496-4214.

External References

• Museum of Indian Arts and Culture — Santa Fe, primary NM jewelry study collection and Cerrillos turquoise archaeological record
• Heard Museum — Phoenix, Fred Harvey Company collection, C.G. Wallace collection, Barry Goldwater collection, primary Southwest jewelry institutional archive
• Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian — Santa Fe, Navajo ceremonial and material culture, Case Trading Post gallery
• University of Oklahoma Press — publisher of John Adair's foundational 1944 study
• University of New Mexico Press — publisher of Margery Bedinger and key Southwestern Indian arts references
• Wikipedia: John Adair
• Wikipedia: Atsidi Sani — the first Navajo silversmith
• Wikipedia: Frank Hamilton Cushing — foundational Zuni ethnographer 1879-1884
• Wikipedia: Fred Harvey — founder of the Harvey House system
• Wikipedia: Lorenzo Hubbell — Hubbell Trading Post, Ganado AZ
• Wikipedia: Cerrillos NM — site of the oldest pre-Columbian turquoise mines in North America
• Indian Arts and Crafts Board (IACB) — federal enforcement agency for the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990
• Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) — operator of the Santa Fe Indian Market since 1922

Related on This Site

• NM Santero & Hispano Folk Art Books — the parallel NM arts-and-crafts collecting canon for Hispano folk traditions
• New Mexico Archaeology Books — the Chaco Canyon and Ancestral Puebloan literature that provides the pre-contact turquoise context
• New Mexico Native American Literature — the broader tribal-literature canon overlapping with jewelry ethnographic documentation
• Navajo Weaving Books — the parallel Navajo arts-scholarship canon; Hubbell Trading Post is central to both
• Pueblo Pottery Books — the complementary Pueblo material-culture collecting literature
• New Mexico Geology & Natural History Books — the mineralogy and geological literature contextualizing turquoise formation and the Cerrillos mining district
• Book Authentication Methodology — points-of-issue guidance applicable to the Adair 1944 first and other key jewelry-literature collector targets
• Closed Signature Pools — Adair (closed 1996), Cushing (closed 1900), Fred Harvey (closed 1901), Lorenzo Hubbell (closed 1930) — signature rarity context for the trophy tier