Mesa and Moon in Southwest Jewelry: Tommy Moore's Pictorial Mark and the Landscape Tradition

The mesa and moon appear as a documented pictorial hallmark on Southwest jewelry through Tommy Moore, a Navajo silversmith whose mark — "TOMMY MOORE STERLING (with a mesa and moon)" — is recorded in Hougart's hallmarks compendium. Moore's mark is one of the cleaner examples in the primary literature of a silversmith embedding a landscape element directly into his authentication stamp.

Field Notes by Mateo James

Hougart's entry (~lines 21336–21337) documents Tommy Moore as a Navajo smith working in cluster work, nugget sets, and textured surfaces, producing bracelets and buckles. His mark reads: "TOMMY MOORE STERLING (with a mesa and moon); one mark is co-stamped with Rickey Rds." The co-stamp with Rickey Rds indicates a working relationship or shop association documented in Hougart — a detail relevant when attributing pieces that carry both names.

The mesa-and-moon pictorial is a landscape image embedded in a maker's mark — the flat-topped rock formation and the curve of the moon rendered as a visual identity rather than a word mark. This places Moore within a broader tradition of Southwestern silversmiths who chose pictorial elements — animals, landscapes, celestial objects — as hallmarks rather than initials or text alone.

Adjacent in Hougart's index is another notation: "Cactus Moon (Zuni). Mark: Symbols (probably a moon over a cactus)" — a separate smith whose mark also combined moon imagery with a Southwest landscape element. The juxtaposition is incidental but tells us that moon-anchored pictorial marks were not unique to Moore: the visual vocabulary of Southwest landscapes (mesa, cactus, moon, sun) recurred as mark elements across the period.

References

• Hougart, Bille. Native American and Southwestern Silver Hallmarks, 5th ed. (2022), ~lines 21336–21337. [Primary source — Tommy Moore entry with mark description and co-stamp note.]