The Legacy of Albuquerque Jewelry Artisans: A Collector's Guide

Albuquerque has been a silver town for more than a century, but not quite in the way most guides tell it. Its jewelry trade grew out of shops that hired Pueblo and Navajo smiths to work in the city, and some of those shops also ran the machines that turned out the thin “Indian” jewelry collectors still warn each other about. Both halves of that history matter if you are buying here today. This guide covers where the trade came from, the case that tested the words “Indian made,” what New Mexico law lets you ask a seller for, and how to read a maker’s mark. If you came to buy, start with our Native American jewelry collection. The advice below applies to any piece, ours included.

How Albuquerque became a silver town

Navajo silver first reached many travelers through traders and the railroad. Margery Bedinger, in Indian Silver: Navajo and Pueblo Jewelers, describes smiths “paid by the ounce” for rings, bracelets and beads made from silver and stones the traders supplied. The pieces “were then sold on the Santa Fe trains and in the stations along the route.” For the hotel-and-railroad side of that story, see The Fred Harvey Era.

Then the manufacturers arrived. Bedinger again: “In 1910 a Denver firm started to manufacture ‘Indian’ jewelry, and using mass production techniques undersold the traders. Dealers in Santa Fe and Albuquerque opened small shops employing Indians, mostly Pueblos, to form the silver, which then could be labeled ‘Indian Made.’”

John Adair, whose 1944 study Bedinger is drawing on, is specific about who those workers were: “Most of this Indian labor was not Navajo, but Pueblo, from the Rio Grande villages, which had their own traditions in silversmithing.”

Who worked in the city’s shops

Adair’s fieldwork in 1938 gives a rough count, pueblo by pueblo, and Bedinger reports it. At Laguna he found twelve young silverworkers. “All had been taught in Albuquerque.” At Isleta, ten of the fifteen younger men making silver were employed in shops in Albuquerque, not in the pueblo. About nine Santo Domingo men worked for jewelers in the city. And of Sandia, a dozen or so miles northeast, Bedinger writes: “Men inclined to work silver could find employment easily in Albuquerque, and those desiring to own jewelry could buy it there.”

Schools fed the trade as well. The government Indian schools taught silversmithing in those years, and Bedinger notes that “Some excellent craftsmen were developed in schools at Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Fort Wingate, Shiprock, and Tuba City.”

Two things follow for a collector. The city’s older silver is Pueblo history at least as much as Navajo history, so don’t assume an early Albuquerque piece is Navajo work. And many smiths worked for a shop, not under their own name, which matters when you go looking for a maker’s mark.

Maisel’s: a factory, a training ground and a test case

The best-documented Albuquerque shop is Maisel’s. The Encyclopedia of Native American Jewelry describes the Maisel Trading Post Company, “which started in 1924,” as “one of a number of manufacturing firms making tourist jewelry and related goods in the early twentieth century.” Indian employees worked “in a workshop setting, with non-Indians supervising,” doing “assembly-line work using mechanized equipment.”

The encyclopedia also gives the shop its due: “Maisel acted as a critical training ground for many native artists, who later incorporated the skills they learned into their own businesses.” The machine-made pieces themselves “are now considered important collectibles.”

Then came the test. In 1932 the Federal Trade Commission brought a case against the company. “The FTC charged that Maisel had misled consumers by describing its products as native-made.” Maisel’s lawyers defended its right to call the product “made by Indians.” The encyclopedia’s summary: “Maisel lost the case, but the company eventually won after numerous appeals. This case is an early example of the difficulties involved in defining and resolving issues of authenticity in Indian arts.”

Arthur Woodward, writing in 1938, was blunter about the machine trade in general. He describes cheap jewelry “made with thin sheet metal and stereotyped dies,” and says its wholesale manufacturers, “particularly those in Albuquerque, hired young Navajo and Pueblo boys to operate the machinery necessary for its manufacture. I counted about forty such operators in one shop.” He doesn’t name the shop.

Here is why that history is worth knowing. The argument over what “Indian made” means was fought in Albuquerque more than ninety years ago, with Native workers in the machine shops as well as at the benches. A label settled nothing then. What holds up is a maker’s name and a written record.

What New Mexico law lets you ask for

Two laws apply when you buy here. The Indian Arts and Crafts Board, part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, calls the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 “a truth-in-marketing law.” Under it, “it is illegal to offer or display for sale, or sell, any art or craft product in a manner that falsely suggests it is Indian produced, an Indian product, or the product of a particular Indian Tribe.”

New Mexico adds a rule about materials. According to the Board’s turquoise brochure, the state’s Indian Arts and Crafts Sales Act, “unlike the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act, requires the seller to disclose in writing the type of materials used.” A seller’s failure to do so “may entitle the consumer to a repayment of the purchase price upon the return of the item.” The federal Act leaves materials out: “the use of materials, such as turquoise, in the production of Indian art or craftwork is not within the scope of the Act.” The Board wrote its turquoise guidance in support of the state law, and with an Albuquerque partner. It “collaborated with Mr. Joe Dan Lowry, of the Turquoise Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico.” The brochure is undated, and for the current state rules it sends readers to the New Mexico Attorney General’s office.

The brochure’s buying tips make a good checklist. It says to “Request a written receipt that includes all the vital information about your purchase,” including:

• the name of the artist and their tribal affiliation
• the name of the mine the turquoise came from
• whether the turquoise is natural, stabilized, or treated
• where the stone was purchased
• the price and the date of purchase
• the business address where you bought it

If a seller can’t fill in a line, they should say so in writing rather than guess. The brochure is also frank about price: “if a price seems too good to be true, be sure to ask more questions about the item and its maker.” For what natural, stabilized and treated mean in practice, see how to tell real turquoise from fake. For the wider warning signs, see our guide to spotting fake Native American jewelry.

Reading a maker’s mark

A hallmark is a smith’s own stamp, usually on the back of a piece near the silver mark. It is the quickest way to connect a piece to a person, and our Native American hallmarks guide collects marks you can compare. But a mark doesn’t always name the person who made the piece. The history above shows why: when smiths worked for a shop, the shop sold the silver as its own. That still happens. One silversmith’s page in our directory notes that his work for other shops “went out under those shops’ stamps — ordinary in this trade, and no sign of anything wrong, but it means some of his silver circulates unattributed.” So a missing or unfamiliar mark isn’t, on its own, proof of anything. Ask the seller what they know about the maker, and get it on the receipt.

Albuquerque artisans whose work we carry

Two makers in our silversmith directory carry this story into the present.

Devin Edison is a Diné (Navajo) silversmith, born and raised in Albuquerque, whose hallmarked work we carry. He trained in the jewelry program at Central New Mexico Community College, one more Albuquerque smith who learned the trade at a school bench. His mark is the initials DE set between two small figural stamps, with Sterling struck below.

Philbert Secatero is a Navajo silversmith from Cuba, New Mexico, whose hallmarked work we carry. He is the silversmith quoted above. Before T.Skies, he made work for the Albuquerque design house of Gertrude Zachary and for Nakai Indian Jewelry in Santa Fe, two houses that sold under their own names. His own mark is a feather stamp struck above a cursive name stamp.

Their listings carry their names, and only their pieces carry their nation. Much of what is in our gallery on Menaul Boulevard in Albuquerque is T.Skies house design by Mateo James, and we don’t call those pieces Native-made. You can read how T.Skies started and see photos from the gallery’s opening in 2019.

The short version

Albuquerque’s jewelry history is a Pueblo and Navajo story, a factory story and a legal story all at once. Buy from a seller who names the maker. Get the materials in writing, since New Mexico law backs you on that. And read the mark without expecting it to answer every question. When you’re ready, browse the Native American jewelry we carry.

Related reading

• The Fred Harvey Era: When the Railroad Met the Silversmith
• The T.Skies Silversmith Directory
• Navajo, Zuni and Hopi jewelry styles
• How to buy authentic Native American jewelry

Frequently asked questions

Field Notes by Mateo James

This guide quotes the Encyclopedia of Native American Jewelry giving 1924 as Maisel's start. June, writing in 2013, says Maurice Maisel staffed his first Albuquerque workshop in 1923. The two dates may describe different milestones; I show both as printed.

Sources

• John Adair, The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths (University of Oklahoma Press, 1944), pp. 25–28.
• Margery Bedinger, Indian Silver: Navajo and Pueblo Jewelers (University of New Mexico Press, 1973), pp. 116, 120, 167, 170, 172, 177.
• Paula A. Baxter with Allison Bird-Romero, Encyclopedia of Native American Jewelry (Oryx Press, 2000), p. 104, “Maisel.”
• Arthur Woodward, Navajo Silver: A Brief History of Navajo Silversmithing, Museum of Northern Arizona Bulletin 14 (1938; 2nd ed. 1946), pp. 46–47.
• U.S. Department of the Interior, Indian Arts and Crafts Board, with Joe Dan Lowry (Turquoise Museum, Albuquerque), Indian Arts and Crafts Act turquoise consumer brochure (GPO, undated).
• T.Skies Silversmith Directory: Devin Edison and Philbert Secatero (T.Skies firsthand records).
• June, Dennis. Fred Harvey Jewelry 1900–1955. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2013. Cited by printed page. Statements describe conditions as of 2013.