Bert Puhuyestiwa — Hopi Silversmith

Bert Puhuyestiwa was the first president of the Hopi Silvercraft Guild. He came to silver through the G.I. Bill class that Paul Saufkie and Fred Kabotie began for Hopi veterans after World War II. Margaret Nickelson Wright's Hopi Silver records that he began silver work in 1948 under the G.I. Bill (Wright 2003, p. 79), and shows him in photographs of the veterans' class of 1949 at the Hopi High School, studying Hopi designs with Kabotie and Saufkie (Wright 2003, p. 39).

Margery Bedinger's Indian Silver gives the class history: it opened in February 1947 with thirteen men, Saufkie teaching technique and Kabotie as art director, and graduated in January 1949. "The graduates organized the Hopi Silvercraft Guild, Bert Puhuey Estewa, president, and selected the Hopi sun shield as their trademark" (Bedinger 1973, p. 202). Paula A. Baxter's Encyclopedia of Native American Jewelry also names him the guild's first president, "active from the 1950s" (Baxter 2000, p. 72).

Bille Hougart's Native American and Southwestern Silver Hallmarks, spelling the name Bert Puhuyestewa, lists him as Hopi, active from the late 1940s in set stones and stamp and file work, and a member of the "Hopi GI Bill class of 1947-1949" (Hougart 2022, p. 256). Wright notes that he "Had not done silversmithing for some time, before 1972," and that his nephew, Howard Dennis, took up the craft in 1991 (Wright 2003, pp. 79, 104).

His hallmark

Wright and Hougart both record a pictorial mark for him, a katsina figure that Wright indexes as Crow Mother (Wright 2003, pp. 79, 119; Hougart 2022, p. 256). His nephew Howard Dennis uses a mark of the same subject (Wright 2003, p. 104), so compare the drawings before attributing a piece.